recent past, visions and memories of those days rise thick and fast
before me. We did, indeed, crowd thundrously down to their feet. Of
the events of those three terrible days I may speak with feeling and
yet with modesty, for small, indeed, was the part which those with
whom I served were called upon to play. When those great bodies of
infantry drove together in the crash of battle, the clouds of
cavalry which had hitherto covered up their movements were swept
aside to the flanks. Our work for the time was done, nor had it been
an easy or a pleasant work. The road to Gettysburg had been paved
with our bodies and watered with our blood. Three weeks before, in
the middle days of June, I, a captain of cavalry, had taken the
field at the head of one hundred mounted men, the joy and pride of
my life. Through twenty days of almost incessant conflict the hand
of death had been heavy upon us, and now, upon the eve of
Gettysburg, thirty-four of the hundred only remained, and our
comrades were dead on the field of battle, or languishing in
hospitals, or prisoners in the hands of the enemy. Six brave young
fellows we had buried in one grave where they fell on the heights of
Aldie. It was late on the evening of the first of July, that there
came to us rumors of heavy fighting at Gettysburg, nearly forty
miles away. The regiment happened then to be detached, and its
orders for the second were to move in the rear of Sedgwick's corps
and see that no man left the column. All that day we marched to the
sound of the cannon. Sedgwick, very grim and stern, was pressing
forward his tired men, and we soon saw that for once there would be
no stragglers from the ranks. As the day grew old and as we passed
rapidly up from the rear to the head of the hurrying column, the
roar of battle grew more distinct, until at last we crowned a hill,
and the contest broke upon us. Across the deep valley, some two
miles away, we could see the white smoke of the bursting shells,