“aye these sunny mountains half-way down
  Would echo flageolet from some romantic town,”—­

did not my heart renew its allegiance to the poet who has made it lovely to the imagination as well as to the eye, and so identified his fame with the noble stream that it “rolls mingling with his fame forever”?  The prosaic traveller perhaps remembers it better from the fact that a great sea-monster, in the shape of a steamboat, takes him, sitting in the car, on its back, and swims across with him like Arion’s dolphin,—­also that mercenary men on board offer him canvas-backs in the season, and ducks of lower degree at other periods.

At Philadelphia again at last!  Drive fast, O colored man and brother, to the house called Beautiful, where my Captain lies sore wounded, waiting for the sound of the chariot-wheels which bring to his bedside the face and the voice nearer than any save one to his heart in this his hour of pain and weakness!  Up a long street with white shutters and white steps to all the houses.  Off at right angles into another long street with white shutters and white steps to all the houses.  Off again at another right angle into still another long street with white shutters and white steps to all the houses.  The natives of this city pretend to know one street from another by some individual differences of aspect; but the best way for a stranger to distinguish the streets he has been in from others is to make a cross or other mark on the white shutters.

This corner-house is the one.  Ring softly,—­for the Lieutenant-Colonel lies there with a dreadfully wounded arm, and two sons of the family, one wounded like the Colonel, one fighting with death in the fog of a typhoid fever, will start with fresh pangs at the least sound you can make.  I entered the house, but no cheerful smile met me.  The sufferers were each of them thought to be in a critical condition.  The fourth bed, waiting its tenant day after day, was still empty. Not a word from my Captain.

Then, foolish, fond body that I was, my heart sank within me.  Had he been taken ill on the road, perhaps been attacked with those formidable symptoms which sometimes come on suddenly after wounds that seemed to be doing well enough, and was his life ebbing away in some lonely cottage, nay, in some cold barn or shed, or at the way-side, unknown, uncared for?  Somewhere between Philadelphia and Hagerstown, if not at the latter town, he must be, at any rate.  I must sweep the hundred and eighty miles between these places as one would sweep a chamber where a precious pearl had been dropped.  I must have a companion in my search, partly to help me look about, and partly because I was getting nervous and felt lonely. Charley said he would go with me,—­Charley, my Captain’s beloved friend, gentle, but full of spirit and liveliness, cultivated, social, affectionate, a good talker, a most agreeable letter-writer, observing, with large relish of life, and keen sense of humor.