My only fear is that we may get used up before the North are tired of it." "I did not expect to hear you talk so, Wingfield, for you always seem to be in capital spirits." "I am in capital spirits," Vincent replied, "and ready to fight again and again, and always confident we shall lick the Yankees; the fact that I have a doubt whether in the long run we shall outlast them does not interfere in the slightest degree with my comfort at present.

I am very sorry though that this fellow Pope is carrying on the war so brutally, instead of in the manner in which General McClellan and the other commanders have waged it.

His proclamation that the army must subsist upon the country it passes through gives a direct invitation to the soldiers to pillage, and his order that all farmers who refuse to take the oath to the Union are to be driven from their homes and sent down South means ruin to all the peaceful inhabitants, for there is scarcely a man in this part of Virginia who is not heartily with us." "I hear," one of the other officers said, "that a prisoner who was captured this morning says that Pope already sees that he has made a mistake, and that he yesterday issued a fresh order saying that the proclamation was not meant to authorize pillage.

He finds that the inhabitants who before, whatever their private sentiments were, maintained a sort of neutrality, are now hostile, that they drive off their cattle into the woods, and even set fire to their stacks, to prevent anything from being carried off by the Yanks; and his troops find the roads broken up and bridges destroyed and all sorts of difficulties thrown in their way." "It does not always pay--even in war--to be brutal.

I am glad to see he has found out his mistake so soon," another officer said.