The division advanced steadily, in quick time. A band on the extreme right playing in the same manner that it would had the division been passing in review, they continued to march forward and the band continued to play.

The shells flew far over us at first, but this lasted but a moment. They soon obtained the range, and then Death commenced his work of destruction. All of the division had been quite near him before, but on this occasion he seemed to be pressing on them so slowly and so steadily and closely it was enough to make the bravest quail under his ghastly appearance. But they went on without flinching; now they have passed half the distance up the hill, and the enemy pour grape and canister into the ranks, causing such wide gaps the division has to be halted and dressed to the right; obliquing and filling up their gaps, they continue to push forward. The infantry now pour their fire into them from behind a stone wall, and their ranks begin to melt away; men are falling in every direction; but still they press on with the wild yell peculiar to Confederate soldiers. They do not hear the band now, it is drowned in the fearful uproar! Round shot, shell, canister and rifle balls are poured into them at close range from the front, and a battery on Round Top rakes the line from the right. General Armistead is in front of his brigade with his hat on his sword and holding it up as a guide. As they were within two hundred yards of the batteries a yell was given, and a dash made for them. The artillerymen left their pieces, and the whole line of thirty-two guns was carried at the point of the bayonet, General Armistead falling dead-shot with his hand on one of the guns. They did all that was expected, and this charge will be remembered by future Americans as the English remember that of the Light Brigade, and the French that of the Old Guard.

Charge! Charge ¡ to the Death!

W

SOUTHERN BOYS AT WEST POINT.

BY THOMAS W. HALL, WEST POINT, '87.

HEN I was requested to write a short article on the relations between the Southern and the Northern boys at West Point, during the four years of hard labor I spent at the great military academy, I had to frankly acknowledge that I knew nothing about such relations. There was nothing in my memory to distinguish the boys of the South from the North. My classmates were all classmates and friends to me, whether they came from Maine or Texas, Illinois or Florida, and, to save me, I cannot to-day make more than a guess as to the birthplace of more than a corporal's guard of our unusually large class-which was, I think, the third largest in the history of the Academy.

The very idea that I knew so little about the geographical relations of my classmates, however, gave me an idea for a story that is not unimportant, when one is considering the relations of the reconstructed

at West Point.

No Sectional Feeling States to the Northern States. It convinced me at once that there could have been no sectional feeling at the Hudson while I was there; and I feel perfectly warranted in saying that there never has been any since the war.

Academy on the

Perhaps the first notice I ever took of a geographical distinction between army officers was at a meeting of the younger officers, or "youngsters," of the Tenth United States Cavalry at Fort Grant, Arizona, to celebrate the Christmas of 1887. I had but recently joined, and was the lowest ranking lieutenant in the regiment. I was a "shave tail" of the "shave tails," to use an army expression, and was commonly called "kid" by the fellows who happened to rank me by a day, a month, or a year in the grade of second lieutenant, and was treated with fatherly care by the fellows who wore the single bars of a first lieutenant.

An American Officer in the German

It was "Polly" Clark who called my attention to the fact that I was the only lieutenant in the regiment, graduated from West Point, who had been born north of Mason and Dixon's line. The amount of fun that was poked at me on this account was enormous. I sincerely hope that the Hussar officers of the regiment Clark served with recently, in the German army, gave him the same sort of joking for being the only American officer who ever held a commission in a foreign army.

Army.

And yet, I do not believe that any man in the world could have told that all those dashing young lieutenants were from the South. They were all of the customary West Point mould, and I might say right here, that after three or four years of West Point discipline, cadets are as alike as two peas, except, perhaps, as regards height and weight and the color of the hair. I remember that we all took the same oath of allegiance, and went through the same hard mill of hazing, and the more disagreeable mill of study, and came out lieutenants, with painfully new clothes-and immense debit accounts with New York tailors and furnishers.

On looking over the West Point register of 1887, I find that there was a great preponderance of Northern boys over Southern boys in our class. I think this was due more to the superior public and other schools of the North than to anything else, although the Southern boys in the class seem to have held more than their own in studies. The difficulty of the Southern boy seems to be to pass the first examination. After that, apparently, he is all right. As I see it now, never having examined into the matter before, the Southern boys and the Northern were about evenly balanced physically. The tallest man in our class was from Illinois; the next in height was from Virginia; the largest man was from Missouri, and the next from Ohio. With the exception of one or two, I remember but very few traces of the Southern peculiarities of speech, and I can say the same about the downEast Yankees of the class. In fact, the Western boy seemed to predominate, and to be more of a noticeable entity than either the Southern or the Northern boy.

A Northern Girl Captures a Southern Soldier.

The president of our class, and one of the most popular men in the Academy during my time, was a Southern boy, and the son of a Southern soldier. He is a cavalryman now, in one of Uncle Sam's most celebrated regiments of horse, and he was captured, at least his heart was, not very long ago, by a granddaughter of old Ben Wade, just as the same thing is presented to us every day in the war dramas of the stage. There was never any sectional feeling in our class, and I am sure that the same thing can be said of all others. The man from Ohio roomed with the man from Georgia, and if they happened to quarrel concerning whose turn it was to bring a bucket of water from the hydrant in the area of the barracks to their room, it was quite likely that a man from Louisiana would second the man from Ohio in the ensuing fight, and that a man from Vermont would attend to such delicate duties for the Georgian. In fact I have seen just such a state of affairs, now that I have come to look matters up.

Our songs used to be evenly divided between Southern and Northern compositions. I do not think it was intentional, either. In fact, I do not believe any of the boys thought anything about the old sectional differences of their fathers. No one will suppose for a moment that the memory of the war will make the Southern officer in the army of to-day any less useful than another. The record of the young Southerners has been, to use a popular phrase, "as fine as silk."

In this connection, I recall sitting before a log fire in my quarters, at Fort Apache, entertaining my guest for a few days, a young lieutenant of infantry, who was the son of a famous Confederate cavalry general. How the subject came up I do not remember, but I do know that he told me a circumstance connected with the reception of his commission in the United States Army that impressed itself very deeply on my mind.

"When I received my commission," he said, "I hardly knew how to approach my father. He knew that I was about to become a commissioned officer of the United States Army, and I knew that he was very proud of my record. Yet he had never said a word about my military ambitions. I left the commission in a conspicuous place on his library table, and went out on the veranda for a smoke. In a little while, my father followed me there. He walked up to me, and took my hand in his. 'Bob,' he said—there were tears in his eyes-'promise me one thing.' I asked him what it was. 'Never go back on the old flag,' he answered. I pressed his hand in assent, and we have never spoken of the matter since. But I A Father's Request know that he thinks my life a direct continuation of his own."

of His Soldier Boy.

It is a trifle off the subject, but I think the greatest and most valuable feature of the regular army of the United States of America is the union in it-and harmonious union, too—of Southern impetuosity and Northern grit. It is like a union of Great Britain and France. These have been the two greatest fighting nations of the world, and whenever they combined they were invincible. At any rate, we may be sure that whether or not we have guns, in any future war we have the men.

the money or the

REMINISCENCES OF GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN AND "STONEWALL " JACKSON.

T

BY GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN, JR.

HE firing of the first gun at Fort Sumter separated my father from very many of the dearest and best friends of his youth and early manhood. "Stonewall" Jackson, Dabney H. Maury, Cadmus M. Wilcox and Samuel B. Maxey were his classmates, while Simon B. Buckner, Barnard E. Bee and A. P. Hill were cadets with him at West Point. G. W. Smith commanded the company of sappers and miners to which my father was attached during the Mexican War; Robert E. Lee was the chief engineer of General Wool's army, and Joseph E. Johnston was intimately associated with him.

My father used to say that he never saw West Point do more good to a man than it did to "Tom" Jackson. "Tom," said my father, "during 'pleb' year was an awkward, bashful boy, who came to the Point with the worst sort of a preparation and apparently no fitness for a military career. His pluck was something absolutely marvelous. I have seen him night after night, after taps had been sounded, rake up the fire, take his book, and, lying down with his head near the fireplace, study by the firelight until three or four o'clock in the morning. Tom came very near being 'found' in pleb year, but by almost superhuman work he not only pulled through all right, but graduated seventeen in the largest class West Point had turned out up to that time. If ever a man deserved success and fame it was dear old Tom Jackson."

I was once told a story by my father that certainly showed more presence of mind on the part of the actors than it did regard for the regulations; at least he seemed to think so, for he stopped to laugh several times during the telling. In their second class year at West Point he and "Jimmie Stuart, who was afterward killed by Indians, roomed together in the old North Barracks, and, as I remember, Dabney H. Maury and Cadmus M. Wilcox roomed next door. It was during the palmiest days of Benny Havens, when no cadet was considered worthy of his uniform unless he paid that revered old person a periodical visit.

"Jimmie, Cadmus, Dabney and I," said my father, "agreed to celebrate Thanksgiving Day with a grand supper. We asked Sam Maxey to join us,