November 22, 1864
As it was fine,
after three days' rain, General Humphreys bestirred himself to give rational
entertainment to the two Englanders; and so General Meade ordered a couple of
brigades of cavalry turned out and a horse-battery. We first rode along the
rear line and went into a fort there. It made quite a cortege, for, besides the
Generals and their officers and orderlies, there followed Mr. Lunn in a
four-horse spring waggon, with General Hunt to bear him company; for Lunn had
received the horseback proposition with mild horror. So he followed in a
waggon, much as Mr. Pickwick was wheeled after the shooting party, when he
finally turned up in the pound. In the fort was a company of soldiers that you
might know beforehand were Germans, so dirty and especially so grimy — they
have a great facility for looking grimy do the Germans. It was funny to see the
different chaps among them: one, evidently a ci-devant Prussian soldier,
was seized with rigidity in all his muscles on beholding a live brace of
Generals. There was another who was an unmistakable student; he had a
moustache, a poetically fierce air, a cap with the brim turned up, and a pair
of spectacles. There he stood, a most out-of-place individual, with our uniform
on, watching anxiously the progress of a pot, boiling on a fire. The cavalry
looked what I have learned to consider as very well; that is, the men looked
healthy, the horses in good flesh, and the arms and equipments in proper
repair. To a European they must have been fearful; very likely so to Major
Smyth, though he was silently polite — no polish, horses rough and woolly, and
of all sizes and colors; men not sized at all, with all kinds of beards and
every known species of hat; but as I know that men do not fight with their hats
and beards, I was satisfied to see evidences of good discipline. Thereafter we
called on General Gregg, where I had a treat in form of some Newton pippins, of
which excellent apple there was a barrel on hand.
SOURCE: George R. Agassiz, Editor, Meade’s
Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness
to Appomattox, p. 277-8
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