Headquarters, Army Of
Potomac
September 29, 1864
The 6.45 P.M. train, which bore me, on Monday, from the
ancient town of Beverly, did arrive in very good season in Boston, where I
hired a citizen, in the hack line, to convey me with speed and safety to the
Worcester depot. With an eye to speculation the driver took in also a lone
female, who looked with a certain alarm on me, doubtful as to whether I might
not be in the highway-robbery line. She had evidently been on a sea-shore
visit, and bore a small pitcher with a bunch of flowers therein. By a superior
activity I got a place in the sleeping-car, for it seems to be the policy to
have about half room enough for the sleepy passengers, so that those who don't
get places may look with envy on t'others and determine to be earlier next
time. Geo. D____ was along. The canny man had got a good berth, in the middle
of the day, and you should have seen his traveller's fixings: a blanket, a sort
of little knapsack, and finally a white handkerchief to tie over his head; “For,”
said he, “perhaps the pillows are not very clean.” With martial indifference I
took off boots and blouse, got on an upper shelf (not without convulsive
kicks), and composed myself to the fitful rest which one gets under such
circumstances. There was, as the conductor truthfully observed, “a tremendous
grist of children in the car” — of all sizes, indeed, from a little one that
publicly partook of its natural nutriment, to youths of some twelve summers.
The first object I saw, on wakening in the morning, was an attentive Ma
endeavoring to put a hooped skirt under the dress of a small gal, without
exhibiting to a curious public the small gal's legs; which attempt on her part
was a lamentable failure. I was glad to get out of the eminently close
locomotive dormitory and hop with agility on the horse-car, which landed me, a
little before seven A.M., at the Astor House. Here I partook of a dollar and a
quarter's worth of tea and mutton-chop, and stretched my legs by a walk to the
Jersey ferry, and there, as our pilgrim fathers would have said, took shipping
for the opposite shore. I should not neglect to say that at the Astor I had
noticed a tall man, in the three buttons of a Major-General, whom I at once
recognized as the original of the many photographs of General Hooker. I was
much disappointed in his appearance: red-faced, very, with a lack-lustre eye
and an uncertainty of gait and carriage that suggested a used-up man. His mouth
also is wanting in character and firmness; though, for all that, he must once
have been a very handsome man. He was a passenger for Washington and sat near
me. Next me was a worthy minister, with whom I talked; he, I do remember,
delivered a prayer at our chapel last winter, at Headquarters. He was like all
of that class, patriotic and one-sided, attributing to the Southerners every
fiendish passion; in support of which he had accumulated all the horrible
accounts of treatment of prisoners, slaves, etc., etc., and had worked himself
into a great state. Evening. 10 P.M. I have got to Baltimore and can't go a
step farther; for all day have I been on the Weldon railroad with General
Meade, and I must slap to bed, for I am most sleepy, though all right.
SOURCE: George R. Agassiz, Editor, Meade’s
Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness
to Appomattox, p. 229-31
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