John Smith's Funny Adventures on a Crutch Or The Remarkable Peregrinations of a One-legged Soldier after the War

CRACK! went a rifle at the battle of Antietam. Not that it was the only one fired, for they were rattling away at the rate of a thousand per second just then; but there was one...

HADDINGTON Hospital had its “characters,” as every place has. I formed ties and associations during the spring of my stay there, which can never be forgotten. Nearly all who wer...

FOR some days, the recovery of Mr. Thomas was very doubtful. Some one had to stay with him continually, and especially at night, for at that dreary hour, “when churchyards yawn,...

THE inmates of the hospital were allowed passes, after roll-call in the morning, to go into the city, or whither they pleased; but it was imperative that they should return by h...

I NEVER saw a man stare with such pure unalloyed astonishment as the Doctor did on this occasion. Not five minutes had elapsed since he had had me locked up in the guard-house,...

HAVING taken a stroll of six or seven hours about the city, I proceeded to Market street, and got into the first car going westward. Soon after, a dignified gentleman, whom I li...

NOW let me proceed. The gentleman in the Market-street car spared me. The questions he asked were few and to the point. He was an exception. When I replied in the affirmative to...

I HAD always been of a literary turn; so, while employed in the Arsenal, I concluded to write a book, and give to the world, therein, an account of soldier life, as I had experi...

IN January, 1865, I concluded to visit the New England—otherwise called the “Yankee” or “Eastern”—States; and thought I would at once strike for Boston, Massachusetts, which is...

WE arrived in Boston Harbor Monday afternoon about four o’clock, and entered a very dense fog about the same time. The fog was so thick for several minutes that objects could no...

ABOUT the middle of March I concluded to take a tour to Baltimore, Harper’s Ferry, Antietam Battle-field, Hagerstown and Harrisburg: at all of which places—and especially ANTIET...

WHEN morning came, I tried for an hour to get a conveyance to Sharpsburg, near Antietam Creek, twelve miles distant; but in vain. Not a horse or carriage of any kind was to be h...

THAT Sunday morning I determined to visit the battle-ground again, and try to find that part of the field on which I had had the honor to be shot; then walk to Hagerstown, a dis...

I SPENT the remainder of the spring and the first two months of the summer in New York, but as the extreme “caloric” of the “heated term” began to make the giant walls and solid...

WE reached Albany at five o’clock, and I stepped ashore and walked carelessly up the street, trying to look as though I had been there before. I don’t think I succeeded. It is t...

NEXT day I left Albany for Rochester, _via_ the New York Central Railroad. Those who have done much traveling by railroad must have been annoyed and tormented from time to time...

ON the following Wednesday morning I took the accommodation train for Niagara Falls. When I say “accommodation train,” do not fancy that we went jogging along at the rate of six...

IN order to reach the “Cave of the Winds”—I don’t see why it should be so styled, for the winds never _caved_ there yet—I had to descend a winding stairway within a wooden tower...

EARLY next morning I started for Canada. Just below the Falls a flight of three hundred steps, protected by a weather-boarded frame-work and roof, descends the steep bank to the...

I LOCATED in a delightful place called “Cold Spring,” in the suburbs of Buffalo, and there remained two weeks; during which time I recovered from my cough, and the gash on my ch...

AFTER a ramble through the wild mountainous region of southwestern Pennsylvania, I returned to Philadelphia; and soon afterward started for Washington, to remain there a few wee...

WASHINGTON City is styled the “City of Magnificent Distances,” because it is laid out to cover a space four and a half miles long by two and a half miles wide, that is, eleven s...

I SPENT the ensuing winter in Philadelphia, the great city which was laid out by William Penn, Esquire, who took a checker-board—an article used in a game invariably played “on...

AS Spring approached, I resolved to take a western tour; and with that view left Philadelphia in February. For the sake of variety, having frequently traveled through Pennsylvan...

I ARRIVED in the “Iron City,” one morning, and having registered my name at an hotel on Grant street, I went down to the “Diamond,” to see a friend of mine in a wholesale grocer...

On this occasion, about twelve minutes before the train started, two men came in, and, desiring to sit together and finding no seat wholly vacant, one of them had the incredible...

ABOUT eleven o’clock, A. M., the train arrived at the little village of Bridgeport, opposite Wheeling, where an omnibus was in waiting to carry over the river all passengers des...

IT was about the first of April, when the weather was delightful, and the nights were lighted by the full moon, that I left Wheeling for Cincinnati, on board the new little stea...

EARLY in May, I left Cincinnati and went to Louisville, Kentucky, one hundred and fifty miles down the river. I took passage on a splendid steamer—one of the finest on the Ohio...

NEXT morning, having taken breakfast, we got into the coach, and departed for the Mammoth Cave, which we reached after a not unpleasant ride of ten miles, over a hilly and woode...

IN the course of my stay in Louisville, I had the pleasure of an introduction to George D. Prentice, Esquire, the well-known editor of the Louisville Journal; and I found him as...

WE had landed at the foot of Pine street, which I followed directly up into the city. I was just about to cross Third street, when my attention was irresistibly attracted to a v...

WISHING to visit some portions of Iowa, I started up the Mississippi in June, on a boat running regularly between Saint Louis and Keokuk, an Iowa town or city with a population...

IN traveling up the Mississippi river, I could not help remarking that the Illinois shore was, with but few exceptions, very low—in many places not more than a foot or two above...

EARLY in July, having visited various sections of Iowa, I started one evening for Chicago, where I arrived next morning about daylight—the distance from Wilton being a little ov...

ABOUT the middle of July, I resolved to return to Philadelphia before completing my tour; and one evening I took an express train for Pittsburg, via the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne an...

I REMAINED in Philadelphia a month, then returned to Chicago, in order to begin where I left off and finish my tour. I only remained in the “Garden City” long enough to give my...

FROM Detroit, I went, by railroad, to Toledo, Ohio, distant eighty or ninety miles. I stopped there with the view of visiting an uncle of mine, whom I had never seen, and who re...

IN the fall, I determined on another western tour, which I accomplished. In this tour I visited the following places: Columbus, Dayton, and Cincinnati, Ohio; Indianapolis and La...

FOR some time I had projected, for the spring of 1867, a voyage to San Francisco, _via_ Cape Horn. My friends advised me, if I wanted to go to California, to take a steamer and...

ANOTHER heavy wave dashed over the bulwarks, and fell upon the deck, with a thump that made the ship tremble. The wind rose higher, and was soon howling among the rigging with a...

WITH Thursday morning came an east wind: it was moderate, at first, but freshened up, and blew positively strong; the sky became heavily overcast with clouds, the rain fell—so d...

BY morning—Saturday, the twenty-third of March—a fearful gale was blowing, and the weather was so heavy that the dismal, misty clouds seemed to float on the bosom of the sea.

NEXT day, (Sunday,) a fresh north-west breeze blew all day, and we made but little progress toward New York. The weather was pleasant, and the ship did not leak so much as befor...

ABOUT the middle of April, a little more than a year after my fearful experience on board the BREWSTER, I might have been seen, (if anybody had been watching), in the vicinity o...

EARLY on the morning of the ninth day from New York we landed at Aspinwall, New Granada, United States of Columbia. The eastern shores of this country, which is a portion of Cen...

WE embarked at Panama on the steamer “Golden Age,” the same day we landed at Aspinwall, and made the passage to San Francisco in fourteen days—touching at the ports of Acapulco...

DEAR reader, before bidding adieu to San Francisco, let your one-legged friend introduce you to a noble citizen of that cosmopolitan city, whom, for the sake of a name, shall be...

EARLY one Monday morning in August, after a sojourn of about three months in San Francisco, in the course of which I had been, on the whole, rather prosperous than otherwise, I...

ENOUGH. I need not tell of our arrival at the steamer; of the trouble the sailors had getting the drunken woman up the gang-ladder; of our meeting Briggs there; of his suggestin...