sentiment in saying that I prefer a field unchanged, not with features blurred by an overlaying of ornamental and commemorative accretions.  A few markers of the simplest, and a plain tablet now and then where a hero fell or valour was unusually conspicuous, should suffice, for a field is more impressive that lies for the most part in its original rudeness and solitude.  At Antietam I found little obtrusive.  Sherman’s fields on the way to and about Atlanta have not been marred; nor at Franklin and Nashville are the plains parked and obelisked out of recognition.  At Bull Run I climbed with a veteran of the signal-service into the top of a high tree, an old war-time station, on the hill near the Henry House.  The precarious platform remained.  From such an eyrie in the same grove, perhaps from this same tree, a Southern friend of mine, on the battle-day, caught sight more than two leagues away of the glint of sunlight on cannon and bayonets toward Sudley Springs, and sent timely notice to Beauregard that a Federal column was turning his left.  Under my eye the landscape was unchanged, with no smoothings or intrusions to embarrass the imagination in making the scene real.  But it was in the Wilderness that I felt especially grateful that the wild thickets for the most part had been let alone.  I found at Fredericksburg an old Confederate, one of Mahone’s command, and hiring an excellent roadster, we drove on a perfect autumn day first to Spottsylvania Court House, then across country to the Brock road, then home by the Wilderness church and Chancellorsville.  On the area we traversed were fought four of our most memorable battles, an area now scarcely less tangled and lonely than when the Federals poured across the Rappahannock into its thickets by the thousand, and were so memorably met.  My veteran knew the pikes and the by-paths, and we fraternised with the warmth usual among foemen who at last have become friends.  He knew the story well of every wood-path and cross-roads.  Certainly I was glad that the rugged acres had undergone no “improvement,” and that the eye fell so nearly on what the old-time soldiers saw.  It so happened it was election-day.  There were polling-places at the court-houses of Fredericksburg and Spottsylvania, at Todd’s Tavern, and the Chancellor house, names bearing solemn associations.  The neighbourhoods had come out to vote, and introduced by my comrade, I had some interesting encounters.  It was a good climax, when toward the end, near the Chancellor House, we met in the road a patriarchal figure, whitebearded and sturdy, on his way home from the polls.  It was old Talley, whose log-house, in 1862, was the point from which Stonewall Jackson began his sudden rush upon Hooker’s right.  Talley, then a young farmer, had walked at the General’s stirrup pointing out the way.  He had interesting things to tell of Stonewall Jackson at that moment when his career culminated.  “What did he seem like?” I queried.  “He was as cool and business-like