Are you there still, Gray? Do you sing still, Woodie? Health and
happiness, comrades! All friendly stars smile on you! Across the years
and the long leagues that divide us, I salute you!
Thus, at Staunton and Lynchburg, reader, gay scenes broke the monotony.
In my journey toward North Carolina, I found food also, for laughter.
I had gone to Hicksford, fifty miles south of Petersburg, to inspect
the cavalry; and in riding on, I looked with curiosity on the
desolation which the enemy had wrought along the Weldon railroad, when
they had destroyed it in the month of December. Stations, private
houses, barns, stables, all were black and charred ruins. The railroad
was a spectacle. The enemy had formed line of battle close along the
track; then, at the signal, this line of battle had attacked the road.
The iron rails were torn from the sleepers; the latter were then piled
up and fired; the rails were placed upon the blazing mass, and left
there until they became red-hot in the middle, and both ends bent down
--then they had been seized, broken, twisted; in a wild spirit of sport
the men had borne some of the heated rails to trees near the road;
twisted them three or four times around the trunks; and there, as I
passed, were the unfortunate trees with their iron boa-constrictors
around them--monuments of the playful humor of the blue people, months
before.
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