He was not well enough to go, some of the timid ones said; but he answered by packing his carpet-bag, and in an hour or two we were on the Pennsylvania Central Railroad in full blast for Harrisburg.

I should have been a forlorn creature but for the presence of my companion.  In his delightful company I half forgot my anxieties, which, exaggerated as they may seem now, ware not unnatural after what I had seen of the confusion and distress that had followed the great battle, nay, which seem almost justified by the recent statement that “high officers” were buried after that battle whose names were never ascertained.  I noticed little matters, as usual.  The road was filled in between the rails with cracked stones, such as are used for Macadamizing streets.  They keep the dust down, I suppose, for I could not think of any other use for them.  By-and-by the glorious valley which stretches along through Chester and Lancaster Counties opened upon us.  Much as I had heard of the fertile regions of Pennsylvania, the vast scale and the uniform luxuriance of this region astonished me.  The grazing pastures were so green, the fields were under such perfect culture, the cattle looked so sleek, the houses were so comfortable, the barns so ample, the fences so well kept, that I did not wonder, when I was told that this region was called the England of Pennsylvania.  The people whom we saw were, like the cattle, well-nourished; the young women looked round and wholesome.

“Grass makes girls,” I said to my companion, and left him to work out my Orphic saying, thinking to myself, that, as guano makes grass, it was a legitimate conclusion that Jehaboe must be a nursery of female loveliness.

As the train stopped at the different stations, I inquired at each if they had any wounded officers.  None as yet; the red rays of the battle-field had not streamed off so far as this.  Evening found us in the cars; they lighted candles in spring-candlesticks; odd enough I thought it in the land of oil-wells and unmeasured floods of kerosene.  Some fellows turned up the back of a seat so as to make it horizontal, and began gambling or pretending to gamble; it looked as if they were trying to pluck a young countryman; but appearances are deceptive, and no deeper stake than “drinks for the crowd” seemed at last to be involved.  But remembering that murder has tried of late years to establish itself as an institution in the cars, I was less tolerant of the doings of these “sportsmen” who tried to turn our public conveyance into a travelling Frascali.  They acted as if they were used to it, and nobody seemed to pay much attention to their manoeuvres.