All demeanour of rural serenity had been wrenched violently from the
little town by the guns and by the waves of men which had surged through
it. The hand of war laid upon this village had in an instant changed it
to a thing of remnants. It resembled the place of a monstrous shaking of
the earth itself. The windows, now mere unsightly holes, made the
tumbled and blackened dwellings seem skeletons. Doors lay splintered to
fragments. Chimneys had flung their bricks everywhere. The artillery
fire had not neglected the rows of gentle shade-trees which had lined
the streets. Branches and heavy trunks cluttered the mud in driftwood
tangles, while a few shattered forms had contrived to remain dejectedly,
mournfully upright. They expressed an innocence, a helplessness, which
perforce created a pity for their happening into this caldron of battle.
Furthermore, there was under foot a vast collection of odd things
reminiscent of the charge, the fight, the retreat. There were boxes and
barrels filled with earth, behind which riflemen had lain snugly, and in
these little trenches were the dead in blue with the dead in grey, the
poses eloquent of the struggles for possession of the town, until the
history of the whole conflict was written plainly in the streets.

And yet the spirit of this little city, its quaint individuality,
poised in the air above the ruins, defying the guns, the sweeping
volleys; holding in contempt those avaricious blazes which had attacked
many dwellings. The hard earthen sidewalks proclaimed the games that had
been played there during long lazy days, in the careful, shadows of the
trees. "General Merchandise," in faint letters upon a long board, had to
be read with a slanted glance, for the sign dangled by one end; but the
porch of the old store was a palpable legend of wide-hatted men, smoking.