Page:Six Months at the White House.djvu/146

Rh together a choice lot of young fowls,—of which he was very proud,—he began to be much annoyed by the depredations of those little black and white spotted animals, which it is not necessary to name. One night Joe was awakened by an unusual cackling and fluttering among his chickens. Getting up, he crept out to see what was going on. It was a bright moonlight night, and he soon caught sight of half a dozen of the little pests, which with their dam were running in and out of the shadow of the shed. Very wrathy, Joe put a double charge into his old musket, and thought he would 'clean' out the whole tribe at one shot. Somehow he only killed one, and the balance scampered off across the field. In telling the story, Joe would always pause here, and. hold his nose. 'Why didn't you follow them up, and kill the rest?' inquired the neighbors. 'Blast it,' said Joe, ' why, it was eleven weeks before I got over killin' one. If you want any more skirmishing in that line you can just do it yourselves!'"

The battle of Fair Oaks was fought May 31, 1862; or rather this is the date of the first of the series of battles before Richmond, when, as is now abundantly established, even by Rebel testimony, it would have been an easy matter for McClellan to have captured what proved to be the