Dear Sir,—­The world goes on, and wicked men sound asleep.  Davis has sworn to destroy my army, and Beauregard has come to do the work,—­so if you expect to share in our calamity, come down.  I offer you this last chance for staff duty, and hope you have had enough in the field.  I do not wish to hurry you, but you can’t get aboard a ship at sea.  So if you want to make the trip, come to Chattanooga and take your chances of meeting me.

Yours truly,

W. T. Sherman, Major General.

One night—­at Cheraw, I think it was—­he sent for me to talk to him.  I found him lying on a bed of Spanish moss they had made for him.  He asked me a great many questions about St. Louis, and praised Mr. Brinsmade, especially his management of the Sanitary Commission.

“Brice,” he said, after a while, “you remember when Grant sent me to beat off Joe Johnston’s army from Vicksburg.  You were wounded then, by the way, in that dash Lauman made.  Grant thought he ought to warn me against Johnston.

“‘He’s wily, Sherman,’ said he.  ‘He’s a dangerous man.’

“‘Grant,’ said I, ’you give me men enough and time enough to look over the ground, and I’m not afraid of the devil.’”

Nothing could sum up the man better than that.  And now what a trick of fate it is that he has Johnston before him again, in what we hope will prove the last gasp of the war!  He likes Johnston, by the way, and has the greatest respect for him.

I wish you could have peeped into our camp once in a while.  In the rare bursts of sunshine on this march our premises have been decorated with gay red blankets, and sombre gray ones brought from the quartermasters, and white Hudson’s Bay blankets (not so white now), all being between forked sticks.  It is wonderful how the pitching of a few tents, and the busy crackle of a few fires, and the sound of voices—­sometimes merry, sometimes sad, depending on the weather, will change the look of a lonely pine knoll.  You ask me how we fare.  I should be heartily ashamed if a word of complaint ever fell from my lips.  But the men!  Whenever I wake up at night with my feet in a puddle between the blankets, I think of the men.  The corduroy roads which our horses stumble over through the mud, they make as well as march on.  Our flies are carried in wagons, and our utensils and provisions.  They must often bear on their backs the little dog-tents, under which, put up by their own labor, they crawl to sleep, wrapped in a blanket they have carried all day, perhaps waist deep in water.  The food they eat has been in their haversacks for many a weary mile, and is cooked in the little skillet and pot which have also been a part of their burden.  Then they have their musket and accoutrements, and the “forty rounds” at their backs.  Patiently, cheerily tramping along, going they know not where, nor care much either, so it be not in retreat.  Ready to make roads, throw up works, tear up railroads, or hew out and build wooden bridges; or, best of all, to go for the Johnnies under hot sun or heavy rain, through swamp and mire and quicksand.  They marched ten miles to storm Fort McAllister.  And how the cheers broke from them when the pop pop pop of the skirmish line began after we came in sight of Savannah!  No man who has seen but not shared their life may talk of personal hardship.