eyewitness. That so many and such varied adventures should
have fallen to the lot of a single person, is passing
strange; and that he should have survived and escaped to
relate them, is, perhaps, yet stranger. That they were all
experienced substantially as related, none will doubt, when
the minute details of name, date, place, and surroundings
are found to be sketched with palpable truthfulness.

The temper of the book is scarcely less noteworthy than its
fund of incident and anecdote. Parson Brownlow's book and
speeches are brimful of invective. He's a good hater,
indeed. He claimed in his Academy of Music speech that, "If
there was any thing on God's earth that he was made for, it
was to pile up epithets against this infernal rebellion!"
_Chacun à son gout._ Our young author has struck a harder
blow at the Confederacy by his damaging facts, than if he
had intensified them with the vocabulary of profanity and
vituperation. There has been more than enough of bitter
words, North and South; it is now a question of strength,
and skill, and endurance. This book will teach us to respect
the energy, while we detest the principles, of this
stupendous rebellion.

* * * * *




PREFACE.