Evenings at the hotels were passed in reviving the “sky-larking” of school-boy days.  These scenes were amusing to participants and spectators.  Sober, dignified men, the majority of them heads of families, occupied themselves in devising plans for the general amusement.

One mode of enjoyment was to assemble in a certain large room, and throw at each other every portable article at hand, until exhaustion ensued.  Every thing that could be thrown or tossed was made use of.  Pillows, overcoats, blankets, valises, saddle-bags, bridles, satchels, towels, books, stove-wood, bed-clothing, chairs, window-curtains, and, ultimately, the fragments of the bedsteads, were transformed into missiles.  I doubt if that house ever before, or since, knew so much noise in the same time.  Everybody enjoyed it except those who occupied adjoining rooms, and possessed a desire for sleep.  Some of these persons were inclined to excuse our hilarity, on the ground that the boys ought to enjoy themselves.  “The boys!” Most of them were on the shady side of twenty-five, and some had seen forty years.

About nine o’clock in the forenoon of the day following Price’s evacuation of Lexington, we obtained news of the movement.  The mail at noon, and the telegraph before that time, carried all we had to say of the affair, and in a few hours we ceased to talk of it.  On the evening of that day, a good-natured “contractor” visited our room, and, after indulging in our varied amusements until past eleven, bade us good-night and departed.

Many army contractors had grown fat in the country’s service, but this man had a large accumulation of adipose matter before the war broke out.  A rapid ascent of a long flight of stairs was, therefore, a serious matter with him.  Five minutes after leaving us, he dashed rapidly up the stairs and entered our room.  As soon as he could speak, he asked, breathing between, the words—­

“Have you heard the news?”

“No,” we responded; “what is it?”

“Why” (with more efforts to recover his breath), “Price has evacuated Lexington!”

“Is it possible?”

“Yes,” he gasped, and then sank exhausted into a large (very large) arm-chair.

We gave him a glass of water and a fan, and urged him to proceed with the story.  He told all he had just heard in the bar-room below, and we listened with the greatest apparent interest.

When he had ended, we told him our story.  The quality and quantity of the wine which he immediately ordered, was only excelled by his hearty appreciation of the joke he had played upon himself.

Every army correspondent has often been furnished with “important intelligence” already in his possession, and sometimes in print before his well-meaning informant obtains it.