INCIDENTS OF HOSPITALS. 269 his life at Shiloh, she has devoted herself to the sick and wounded soldiers. The State of Wisconsin claims her services especially for Wisconsin, but all feel the influence of her kind and sympathetic nature. Her life is passed in the hospitals, where she is indeed an angel of mercy. CHAPTER XVI. Mrs. Livermore's trip from Young's Point to Lake Providence.-Visit to Mercantile Battery at Milliken's Bend.-Trip up the river to Cairo. Contraband boy.-Refugee girl. DEAR MILLIKEN'S BEND, LA., April, 1863. -We came up to Milliken's Bend on the dispatch-boat "Fanny Ogden," because we were obliged to go where the boat was ordered. There are no hotels in this part of the world, no private boarding-houses outside of Vicksburg, and these, just now, are not easily accessible to Northern travellers. There are only tents for those who live on shore, and boats for those who take to the river. It is a difficult matter to decide which is preferable of the two. If you take to the tents, your cuisine is out-doors, where rain, smoke and ashes, saturate all the food; you eat, drink and sleep in the mud, and are phlebotomized by the musquitoes; but you are sure of plenty of fresh, pure air. If you live on the boats, your kitchen is under cover, to be sure; you avoid the mud and musquitoes, but you furnish a nightly repast to insects more vulgar than musquitoes, one species of which infests alike both camps and boats in these war times, while "the rats . TRANSPORTS ON MISSISSIPPI. 271 and the mice,they make such a strife," that sleep comes not to your eyes nor slumber to your eyelids, and the air is pestilential from the uncleanliness of the surroundings. Ugh! Haven't we had lively times o' nights, on board the boats, and haven't we recently acquired a practical knowledge of the utility of finger-nails? Government has impressed all the boats on the river into its service, and has used them at various times for the transportation of troops and army stores, and it must be confessed that Uncle Sam has not shown himself a miraculously good steward. Stripped of carpets, mirrors, elegant furniture, toilet appurtenances, everything in the way of luxury, and I had almost said convenience, marred by the troops transported on them, broken and battered in their repeated attempts to navigate unnavigable rivers and bayous, the pilot-houses battened with rough oak plank two and three feet thick, to protect the steersman from the muskets of the guerillas, neglected, befouled, and unhome-like, the boats on the Mississippi to-day bear little resemblance to the floating palaces of three years ago, when gorgeous with upholstery, and swarming with the fashionable and gay, they drifted down the river with music and dancing, as though life were one prolonged gala-day. As the "Fanny Ogden was "under orders," and would be running up and down the river for two or three days, on errands for General Grant, we determined to accept the invitation of the Chicago Mercantile Battery, encamped at Milliken's Bend, and try tent-life for a day or two. So we were put ashore at the landing, and, in the fading twilight, picked our way along the levee to their camp. What a hearty welcome was accorded us! What a chorus of cheer ful, manly, familiar voices proclaimed the gladness of the Battery at our arrival! Forth from every tent and "shebang" swarmed a little host of the boys, all bronzed to the color of the Atlantic Monthly covers, to use one of their own comparisons, all extending eager hands, all hearty, healthy, and impatient to hear from home, and to possess the letters and well-filled boxes sent them from mothers, wives, sisters and friends. Here they were-" our boys," of whom we took sad and tearful leave months ago, when we gave them to God and our country at the altar of the sanctuary, where they alone were brave, calm and hopeful. Here they were -the same boys, but outwardly how changed. Then, they were boys, slender, fair, with boyish, immature faces; now, they were men, stalwart, fuller and firmer of flesh, the fair, sweet, boyish look supplanted by a stern, daring, resolute expression. Marches and foraging expeditions, guard-duty and camp-life, and the battles of Chickasaw Bluffs and Arkansas Post, where they had looked death unblenchingly in the face, had graven firm lines about the mouth, and high resolve on the youthful brows. not the same. "Our boys" were the same, and yet The best "shebang" of the camp was immediately placed at our service, and the boys bestirred themselves to make our stay with them comfortable. Everything in the way of shelter, in camp parlance, that is not a tent, is a "shebang." Those of the Battery are rough huts, made of boards, with plank floors, and roofed with canvas. A bona fide glass window at one end, a panelled door, and sometimes green blinds, at the other; planks, windows and doors, all "jerked" from some deserted plantation, make up the "shebang." CHICAGO MERCANTILE BATTERY. 273 Inside are two bunks, one built over the other, bedded with husks or hay, each large enough to accommodate two sleepers; a rough pantry with shelves, holding rations, odd crockery, and cutlery, mostly "jerked" from the secesh, a home-made table, and long bench, and these, with a bit of looking-glass, sundry pails and camp-kettles, and a drop-light extemporized from a glass bottle or broken bayonet, holding a candle suspended from the ridge-pole by a wire, make up the furniture. To tell the truth, the wood-sheds of the fathers of these boys infinitely surpass these hastily improved camp-houses of ⚫the sons; but the latter, now accustomed to roughing it, continually challenged our admiration of their quarters with vociferous queries of, "Now, isn't this shebang splendid?" "Don't you see that we can make you ladies as comfortable as you would be at home?" Of course we would not for the world have hinted to the dear fellows that we had an opinion on the subject different from their own; and I am inclined to think that they believe we came away almost envying them their elegant southern residences. We passed two nights and one day in their camp, and never enjoyed any visit more highly. The beauty of their location at Milliken's Bend cannot be surpassed. The trees -oak, magnolia, pride-of-china, and cottonwood-were in full leaf, the air was heavy with the fragrance of jasmine and roses, mocking-birds sang overhead, and the air was soft and balmy as the latter part of our June. If any one supposes that we had a Quaker meeting in that "shebang," on our first night, he is very much mistaken. We were put through a course of catechism concerning matters and persons at home that completely exhausted our stock of informa |