* * * * *

THE WILD ENDIVE.

  Only the dusty common road,
    The glaring weary heat;
  Only a man with a soldier’s load,
    And the sound of tired feet.

  Only the lonely creaking hum
    Of the Cicada’s song;
  Only a fence where tall weeds come
    With spiked fingers strong.

  Only a drop of the heaven’s blue
    Left in a way-side cup;
  Only a joy for the plodding few
    And eyes that look not up.

  Only a weed to the passer-by,
    Growing among the rest;—­
  Yet something clear as the light of the sky
    It lodges in my breast.

THE CONTRABANDS AT FORTRESS MONROE.

In the month of August, 1620, a Dutch man-of-war from Guinea entered James River and sold “twenty negars.”  Such is the brief record left by John Rolfe, whose name is honorably associated with that of Pocahontas.  This was the first importation of the kind into the country, and the source of existing strifes.  It was fitting that the system which from that slave-ship had been spreading over the continent for nearly two centuries and a half should yield for the first time to the logic of military law almost upon the spot of its origin.  The coincidence may not inappropriately introduce what of experience and reflection the writer has to relate of a three-months’ soldier’s life in Virginia.

On the morning of the 22d of May last, Major-General Butler, welcomed with a military salute, arrived at Fortress Monroe, and assumed the command of the Department of Virginia.  Hitherto we had been hemmed up in the peninsula of which the fort occupies the main part, and cut off from communication with the surrounding country.  Until within a few days our forces consisted of about one thousand men belonging to the Third and Fourth Regiments of Massachusetts militia, and three hundred regulars.  The only movement since our arrival on the 20th of April had been the expedition to Norfolk of the Third Regiment, in which it was my privilege to serve as a private.  The fort communicates with the main-land by a dike or causeway about half a mile long, and a wooden bridge, perhaps three hundred feet long, and then there spreads out a tract of country, well wooded and dotted over with farms.  Passing from this bridge for a distance of two miles northwestward, you reach a creek or arm of the bay spanned by another wooden bridge, and crossing it you are at once in the ancient village of Hampton, having a population of some fifteen hundred inhabitants.  The peninsula on which the fort stands, the causeway, and the first bridge described, are the property of the United States.  Nevertheless, a small picket-guard of the Secessionists had been accustomed to occupy a part of the bridge, sometimes coming even to the centre, and a Secession flag waved in sight of the fort.  On the 13th of May, the Rebel picket-guard was driven from the