“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 Ichaboe 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-candle-sticks; 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 Frascati.  They acted as if they were used to it, and nobody seemed to pay much attention to their manoeuvres.

We arrived at Harrisburg in the course of the evening, and attempted to find our way to the Jones House, to which we had been commended.  By some mistake, intentional on the part of somebody, as it may have been, or purely accidental, we went to the Herr House instead.  I entered my name in the book, with that of my companion.  A plain, middle-aged man stepped up, read it to himself in low tones, and coupled to it a literary title by which I have been sometimes known.  He proved to be a graduate of Brown University, and had heard a certain Phi Beta Kappa poem delivered there a good many years ago.  I remembered it, too; Professor Goddard, whose sudden and singular death left such lasting regret, was the Orator.  I recollect that while I was speaking a drum went by the church, and how I was disgusted to see all the heads near the windows thrust out of them, as if the building were on fire.  Cedat armis toga.  The clerk in the office, a mild, pensive, unassuming young man, was very polite in his manners, and did all he could to make us comfortable.  He was of a literary turn, and knew one of his guests in his character of author.  At tea, a mild old gentleman, with white hair and beard, sat next us.  He, too, had come hunting after his son, a lieutenant in a Pennsylvania regiment.  Of these, father and son, more presently.

After tea we went to look up Dr. Wilson, chief medical officer of the hospitals in the place, who was staying at the Brady House.  A magnificent old toddy-mixer, Bardolphian in hue, and stern of aspect, as all grog-dispensers must be, accustomed as they are to dive through the features of men to the bottom of their souls and pockets to see whether they are solvent to the amount of sixpence, answered my question by a wave of one hand, the other