There we sat, cheek by jowl with our new friends, till nearly twelve o'clock, talking politics and discussing the war. The general was a stanch Unionist, having, according to his own showing, suffered dreadful things from secessionist persecutors since the rebellion commenced. As a matter of course everybody present was for the Union. In such a place one rarely encounters any difference of opinion. The general was very eager about the war, advocating the immediate abolition of slavery, not as a means of improving the condition of the Southern slaves, but on the ground that it would ruin the Southern masters. We all sat by, edging in a word now and then, but the general was the talker of the evening. He was very wrathy, and swore at every other word. "It was pretty well time,"he said, "to crush out this rebellion, and by ---- it must and should be crushed out; General Jim Lane was the man to do it, and by ---- General Jim Lane would do it!" and so on. In all such conversations the time for action has always just come, and also the expected man. But the time passes by as other weeks and months have passed before it, and the new general is found to be no more successful than his brethren. Our friend was very angry against England. "When we've polished off these accursed rebels, I guess we'll take a turn at you. You had your turn when you made us give up Mason and Slidell, and we'll have our turn by-and-by." But in spite of his dislike to our nation he invited us warmly to come and see him at his home on the Missouri River. It was, according to his showing, a new Eden, a Paradise upon earth. He seemed to think that we might perhaps desire to buy a location, and explained to us how readily we could make our fortunes. But he admitted in the course of his eulogiums that it would be as much as his life was worth to him to ride out five miles from his own house. In the mean time the teamsters greased their boots, the soldiers snored, those who were wet took off their shoes and stockings, hanging them to dry round the stove, and the Western farmers chewed tobacco in silence, and ruminated. At such a house all the guests go in to their meals together. A gong is sounded on a sudden, close behind your ears;accustomed as you may probably be to the sound, you jump up from your chair in the agony of the crash, and by the time that you have collected your thoughts the whole crowd is off in a general stampede into the eating-room. You may as well join them; if you hesitate as to feeding with so rough a lot of men, you will have to set down afterward with the women and children of the family, and your lot will then be worse. Among such classes in the Western States the men are always better than the women. The men are dirty and civil, the women are dirty and uncivil.
On the following day we visited the camp, going out in an ambulance and returning on horseback. We were accompanied by the general's aid-de-camp, and also, to our great gratification, by the general's daughter. There had been a hard frost for some nights, but though the cold was very great there was always heat enough in the middle of the day to turn the surface of the ground into glutinous mud;consequently we had all the roughness induced by frost, but none of the usually attendant cleanliness. Indeed, it seemed that in these parts nothing was so dirty as frost. The mud stuck like paste and encompassed everything. We heard that morning that from sixty to seventy baggage wagons had "broken through," as they called it, and stuck fast near a river, in their endeavor to make their way on to Lebanon. We encountered two generals of brigade, General Siegel, a German, and General Ashboth, a Hungarian, both of whom were waiting till the weather should allow them to advance. They were extremely courteous, and warmly invited us to go on with them to Lebanon and Springfield, promising to us such accommodation as they might be able to obtain for themselves. I was much tempted to accept the offer; but I found that day after day might pass before any forward movement was commenced, and that it might be weeks before Springfield or even Lebanon could be reached. It was my wish, moreover, to see what I could of the people, rather than to scrutinize the ways of the army. We dined at the tent of General Ashboth, and afterward rode his horses through the camp back to Rolla, I was greatly taken with this Hungarian gentleman. He was a tall, thin, gaunt man of fifty, a pure-blooded Magyar a I was told, who had come from his own country with Kossuth to America. His camp circumstances were not very luxurious, nor was his table very richly spread; but he received us with the ease and courtesy of a gentleman. He showed us his sword, his rifle, his pistols, his chargers, and daguerreotype of a friend he had loved in his own country. They were all the treasures that he carried with him--over and above a chess-board and a set of chessmen, which sorely tempted me to accompany him in his march.
