I rejoined my companions in time to take the noon-train for Baltimore.  Our company was gaining in number as it moved onwards.  We had found upon the train from New York a lovely, lonely lady, the wife of one of our most spirited Massachusetts officers, the brave Colonel of the __th Regiment, going to seek her wounded husband at Middletown, a place lying directly in our track.  She was the light of our party while we were together on our pilgrimage, a fair, gracious woman, gentle, but courageous,

—–­“ful plesant and amiable of port,
—–­estatelich of manere,
And to ben holden digne of reverence.”

On the road from Philadelphia, I found in the same car with our party Dr. William Hunt of Philadelphia, who had most kindly and faithfully attended the Captain, then the Lieutenant, after a wound received at Ball’s Bluff, which came very near being mortal.  He was going upon an errand of mercy to the wounded, and found he had in his memorandum-book the name of our lady’s husband, the Colonel, who had been commended to his particular attention.

Not long after leaving Philadelphia, we passed a solitary sentry keeping guard over a short railroad bridge.  It was the first evidence that we were approaching the perilous borders, the marches where the North and the South mingle their angry hosts, where the extremes of our so-called civilization meet in conflict, and the fierce slave-driver of the Lower Mississippi stares into the stern eyes of the forest-feller from the banks of the Aroostook.  All the way along, the bridges were guarded more or less strongly.  In a vast country like ours, communications play a far more complex part than in Europe, where the whole territory available for strategic purposes is so comparatively limited.  Belgium, for instance, has long been the bowling-alley where kings roll cannon-balls at each other’s armies; but here we are playing the game of live ninepins without any alley.

We were obliged to stay in Baltimore over night, as we were too late for the train to Frederick.  At the Eutaw House, where we found both comfort and courtesy, we met a number of friends, who beguiled the evening hours for us in the most agreeable manner.  We devoted some time to procuring surgical and other articles, such as might be useful to our friends, or to others, if our friends should not need them.  In the morning, I found myself seated at the breakfast-table next to General Wool.  It did not surprise me to find the General very far from expansive.  With Fort McHenry on his shoulders and Baltimore in his breeches-pocket, and the weight of a military department loading down his social safety-valves, I thought it a great deal for an officer in his trying position to select so very obliging and affable an aid as the gentleman who relieved him of the burden of attending to strangers.

We left the Eutaw House, to take the cars for Frederick.  As we stood waiting on the platform, a telegraphic message was handed in silence to my companion.  Sad news:  the lifeless body of the son he was hastening to see was even now on its way to him in Baltimore.  It was no time for empty words of consolation:  I knew what he had lost, and that now was not the time to intrude upon a grief borne as men bear it, felt as women feel it.