CHAPTER I "Lay down the axe; fling by the spade; Leave in its track the toiling plow; The rifle and the bayonet-blade For arms like yours were fitter now; And let the hands that ply the pen Quit the light task, and learn to wield The horseman's crooked brand, and rein The charger on the battle field." —Bryant. In the fall of the year 1860, when I was in my nineteenth year, I boarded the steamboat Virginia,—the only one... more...