Camps And Prisons

An orderly dashes up to my tent, with missive from Headquarters. You will report immediately to General Emory. .. I sally out at once, and lose myself in darkness of boggy fields and foot-paths lately submerged by the rain-deluge. Nevertheless, accomplishing the distance between the General’s quarters and my own, I present myself before him with due alacrity. He is a stern looking man, middle-aged, who in his youth, doubtless, was handsome. Engaged with an Adjutant, inditing orders and dispatches, he looks -up as I enter, nods, and’points to a chair. General Emory has a good record of past service before the war. ‘He directed a military reconnoissance in Missouri and California, publishing a graphiq volume of Notes thereon, some sixteen years ago; and his official reports to Government on the Gold Regions, and as historian of the Mexican Boundary Commission, are of interest and value in a literary point of view. So, waiting here for orders, I regard the physiognomy of my General sympathetically, both as soldier and author. Camp gossip gives General Emory a reputation for rigor in discipline painting him as a rough and gruflj bashaw-sort of commander; but I fail to notice any traits of martinetism in his serious lineaments. Curiously, however, an anecdote told by onr volunteer boys about the General crosses my mind at this moment. They had been demolishing fences, as usual, these brave boys, gathering firewood for coffee-boiling; and, as usual, likewise, those innocent sufferers, the secesh planters, had complained to the General of their grievances; whereat a special order issued from headquarters. It recited the enormity of depredations, the necessity of inflexible discipline, the duty of officers and men…