Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 23.djvu/116

 110 Southern Historical Society Papers.

did that night. It is recalled now by some of us who have grown older and more sleepless, as one of the most delightful and refresh- ing nights ever spent in the army or out of it. We did not take time to consider who had invented sleep or to thank the inventor, but we slept without any consciousness that we did it.

" If ignorance be indeed a bliss. As some wise poet says it is, Sure no ignorance equals this, To sleep and not to know it."

The first sound that greeted us next morning (Sunday, 2ist July,) about daybreak, was the booming of a heavy gun fired from some point north of Bull Run towards Centreville by the. Federals, with no such harmless purpose, however, as of waking us to breakfast, for the shells sent out of " Long Tom " seemed to be aimed with a more deadly purpose. They were bad on our appetites. None of us had ever heard anything so loud except thunder, and we had got used to that. The shells had a horrible, uncanny way of passing through the air, so that a fellow could not guess whether it was half a mile above him or near enough to cut off his ears. He generally estimated that his ears were the target, and gesticulated with his head accordingly. That morning, however, the disagreeable per- formance of Long Tom did not last long. We got our breakfast and limbered up ready to march and awaited orders. Some of us went to a high hill in our rear, from which Centreville could be seen, in order to see what was going on over there. The Federals, seeing the crowd, turned their big gun on us, and we speedily rejoined the guns at the foot of the hill, curiosity allayed if not satisfied. One of the enemy's shells having fallen very near our battery as it stood in column ready to march, the captain moved us about a mile south- ward out of the range, and we halted on the side of a well-trodden road nearly parallel with Bull Run, and there awaited orders. We had not been there long when General Johnston and staff and couriers passed along the road going westward. Seeing our bat- tery, he stopped and asked whose it was, and what it was doing there, seemed to be implied. The captain, or nearest officer, an- swered his questions; whereupon we were ordered to mount, and we set out on a trot, following the General, who said he would send back orders as to the position we should take. The men all mounted the carriages and we went at a trot, following this road westward several miles, and for the most part through timber. Finally, as we