in

"Then what does he propose doing?" I asked, with my heart my mouth and a tremor in every limb.

"Can't you see what we're doing?" he snapped.

"Not very well," I responded.

"Well, we're going back to Richmond."

"My God!" I cried.

"I reckon," continued the man, "you'd a heap sight rather be back in prison than blowed up like them other Yanks was that we just saw.

"No," I replied, and I honestly meant it, "I would a thousand times rather be blown up or shot to pieces than to return to that hell of Libby again."

The man was right; we were going back to Richmond. From the heights of unspeakable joy we were suddenly plunged into the depths of an unutterable despair. One man, an emaciated Sergeant named Gates, who had been brought from Belle Isle that morning and who had cheered with the rest at sight of the flag, died as we were returning under the guns of Fort Darling. The shock was something indescribable. Had the whole affair been planned for the purpose of inflicting on us the most exquisite torture that human ingenuity or devilish cunning could devise, it could not have succeeded better. An ashy hue, like the pallor that precedes death, spread over the pale, haggard faces of the prisoners, and from the eyes the light of hope vanished, giving place to the stony look of despair.

It began to rain as the spires of Richmond came to view, and, although we might have found shelter in the boat, the prisoners sat forward in stolid groups, nor gave a thought to the downpour that drenched them to the skin. Just before the return began we were served with some wheat bread and bacon, both great luxuries, but not enough to satisfy our hunger, and this was all the food we received till the following day.

After landing, we were marched that is, those of us who could walk-up Cary Street again, and we expected to be returned to our old quarters in Libby, but instead we were taken to a warehouse near

the Pemberton Building, known as "Hospital Number Ten." The place was crowded with sick men from Belle Isle, all the prisoners who could be moved from that place having been sent south to Andersonville on that and the three preceding days.

It was dark when we entered this building, and after having been out in the pure, open air, the stench of the place was so sickening as to make us faint. We were taken to the second story, and, by the light of a smoky lamp at the head of the stairs, we could see laid out on the floor the skeleton forms of nine men, all of whom had died that day. The sight did not horrify me; I rather envied the men who had answered the mystic angel's bugle call and gone from torture to the white tents of the silent. The blankets, for which the dead had no longer any use, were given to us, and the guard told us to spread them wherever we could find room, and he jocularly remarked on leaving, "Gents, that's 'bout the best I can do for you, so try to make yourself at home."

I dropped off to sleep about 2 o'clock, and did not wake up till 5. Hearing great yelling and commotion in the direction of Libby, I got up and went to a front window, and saw Cary Street filled with prisoners and guards. Libby had been emptied, and even while I was watching, the men were marched to the cars that were to carry them to the South, where those who did not escape or die were destined to remain till the end of the war. After this Libby

was never again used as a place for the permanent confinement of prisoners of war.

(To be continued)

ASA N. HAYS.

SELECTIONS FROM THE LITERARY CORRESPOND

ENCE OF EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN

W

E think our readers will appreciate this varied selection from the literary correspondence of Mr. Stedman, affording as it does an insight into the universal esteem in which he was held by his fellow writers, both here and abroad.

Unless otherwise noted all letters were addressed to him.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

Boston, April 5, 1872.

He draws a comparison between life in New York and Boston. In the six years I have been here, I have found seven or eight hearts so full of noble things that there is no room in them for such trifles as envy, and conceit and insincerity. I didn't find more than two or three such hearts in New York, and I lived there fifteen years. It was an excellent school for me to get out of! I wonder that I got out of it with my English tolerably correct!

Same.

He comments on the novels of Henry James.

He is an egoist of the very finest type; but he is not a natural story-teller. Story-tellers-like poets and virgins are born and not made. I don't mean to assume by all this that I am a born story-teller. I don't know, and am trying to find out.

Same.

Ponkapog, Mass., October 8, 1879. I have been working like a slave on the long story started just as I went abroad, and am in want of fresh air. I am curious to compare London experiences with you, and to hear all about your good time." I know you must have come back, as I did, loving Browning personally. I suppose you are as full of "impressions" as you can stick. There's an Americanism for

Same.

you!

Ponkapog, Mass., November 20, 1880. Criticising the writings of Walt Whitman, he says:

You seemed to think I was going to take exception to your paper on Walt Whitman. It was all admirably said, and my opinion

did not run away from you at any important point. I place less value than you do on the endorsement of Swinburne, Rossetti, &c., inasmuch as they have also endorsed the very poor paper of Joaquin Miller. If Whitman had been able (he was not able, for he tried it and failed) to put his thoughts into artistic verse, he would have attracted little or no attention perhaps. Where he is fine he is fine in precisely the way of conventional poets. The greater bulk of his writing is neither prose nor verse, and certainly it is not an improvement on either. Whitman's manner is a hollow affectation, and represents neither the man nor the time. As the voice of the nineteenth century, he will have little significance in the twentyfirst. That he will outlast the majority of his contemporaries, I haven't the faintest doubt, but it will be in a glass case, or a quart of spirits, in an anatomical museum.

Same.

Ponkapog, May 25, 1884.

I hope the money troubles in Wall Street haven't touched you Wall St. mustn't laugh any more at the Boston "Woman's Bank"! Grant and Ward beat it. I wish you were here this hour. I am writing in an old house in the midst of thousands of apple-trees nearly breaking down with blossoms. I never saw anything finer in the Old World.

Same.

Giving his own views of Holmes's Poems.

I think you are right about Holmes being in, and out of fashion. His Lyrics were at first very popular; then there came a timebetween 1847 & 1857-when his bright work was rather overshadowed by a different kind-that of Longfellow and Whittier. The poems in the Autocrat brought H. to the front again. After a while he lost ground, it seems to me he wrote too many class-day verses; they had an instant, local success, but they belonged, as our friend Henry James would say, to the parochial school of poetry. The verse that pleases merely a set doesn't last like the verse that impresses a solitary reader here and there. Nothing is forgotten as quickly as the stanza that makes us laugh, and nothing is remembered so long as the stanza that makes us think or feel. Holmes has written very few of the latter sort.

Same.

Boston, February 29, 1888. I've just been re-reading the chap. on Whittier. How excellent it is, and judicial! I smiled over Maud as a typical N. E. name, yet Bryant makes his hunter look back at

The cottage of his GENEVIEVE!!

God save us all! Isn't poetry, too, "a finer art" than it used to be?

Same.

November 19, 1890. Speaking of Mr. Woodberry as a critic, he says, referring to the last volume of the "Library of American Literature":

My last official act on leaving the editorship of The Atlantic was to arrange with him for that review. There are not two men in the United States who could have written it, unless you are the other man. What a blessed relief it is not to make a hundred bitter enemies per month for declining MSS! I am so happy these days that I sometimes half suspect some calamity lurking around the corner.

Same.

Speaking of his own works, he says:

I have used up the slow hours in revising my poems for a complete edition in two or three volumes. I shall recast a hundred verses and blot out a thousand. Oblivion will presently take charge of the whole lot, but meanwhile I intend that my rhyme shall put its best metrical foot forward. I shall be fifty-nine next month. I don't see what time was invented for!

Same.

Boston, December 14, 1904.

Here I am back again in the old Puritan town which, after all, seems to me the only place worth living in. I know Paris and London and St. Petersburg and Rome and Constantinople and Manhattan-I am writing like a Whitman or an Emerson! but I know of no spot that gives such rest and inspiration to body and mind.

John Bigelow.

To Mrs. Stedman.

Philadelphia, March 10, 1890.

On the other problems you propound I can throw no light. The "Put none but Americans on guard to-night” has usually been