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consequence, the town. What before was confusion grew worse ; the retreatbecame a stampede. The battery may not have done a very great deal of exe-cution, but it made a fearful noise. It is curious how much louder guns soundwhen they are pointed at you than when turned the other way! And theshell, with its long-drawn screeching, though no doubt less terrifying thanthe singing minie-ball, has a way of making one’s hair stand 011 end. Then,too, every one who has had any experience in such things, knows howinfectious fear is, how it grows when yielded to, and how, when you oncebegin to run, it soon seems impossible to run fast enough; whereas, if youcan manage to stand your ground, the alarm lessens and sometimes disappears.
Some one suggested that yellow was the hospital color, and immediatelyeverybody who could lay hands upon a yellow rag hoisted it over the house.The whole town was a hospital; there was scarcely a building that could notwith truth seek protection under that plea, and the fantastic little strips weresoon flaunting their ineffectual remonstrance from every roof-tree andchimney. When this specific failed the excitement became wild and ungov-ernable. It would have been ludicrous had it not produced so much suffering.The danger was less than it seemed, for McClellan, after all, was not bom-barding the town, but the army, and most of the shells flew over us andexploded in the fields; but aim cannot be always sure, and enough shellsfell short to convince the terrified citizens that their homes were about tobe battered down over their ears. The better people kept some outward cool-ness, with perhaps a feeling of “noblesse oblige”; but the poorer classes actedas if the town were already in a blaze, and rushed from their houses withtheir families and household goods to make their way into the country. Theroad was thronged, the streets blocked; men were vociferating, women cry-ing, children screaming; wagons, ambulances, guns, caissons, horsemen,footmen, all mingled—nay, even wedged and jammed together—in onestruggling, shouting mass. The negroes were the worst, and with faces ofa ghastly ash-color, and staring eyes, they swarmed into the fields, carryingtheir babies, their clothes, their pots and kettles, fleeing from the wrathbehind them. The comparison to a hornet’s nest attacked by boys is not agood one, for there was no “ fight ” shown; but a disturbed ant-hill is alto-gether inadequate. They fled widely and camped out of range, nor wouldthey venture back for days.
Had this been all, we could afford to laugh now, but there was another sideto the picture that lent it an intensely painful aspect. It was the hurryingcrowds of wounded. Ah me! those maimed and bleeding fugitives ! Whenthe firing commenced the hospitals began to empty. All who were able topull one foot after another, or could bribe or beg comrades to carry them,left in haste. In vain we implored them to stay; in vain we showed themthe folly, the suicide, of the attempt; in vain we argued, cajoled, threatened,ridiculed; pointed out that we were remaining and that there was less dangerhere than on the road. There is no sense or reason in a panic. The cannonwere bellowing upon Douglas’s Hill, the shells whistling and shrieking, the airfull of shouts and cries; we had to scream to make ourselves heard. The