[240] small-pox subsides (and it is really diminishing decidedly) we may yet come in at the wrong end of the Florida affair.
February 19.
Not a bit of it!
This morning the General has ridden up radiant, has seen General Gillmore, who has decided not to order us to Florida at all, nor withdraw any of this garrison.
Moreover, he says that all which is intended in Florida is done,--that there will be no advance to Tallahassee, and General Seymour will establish a camp of instruction in Jacksonville.
Well, if that is all, it is a lucky escape.
We little dreamed that on that very day the march toward Olustee was beginning.
The battle took place next day, and I add one more extract to show how the news reached Beaufort.
February 23, 1864.
There was the sound of revelry by night at a ball in Beaufort last night, in a new large building beautifully decorated.
All the collected flags of the garrison hung round and over us, as if the stars and stripes were devised for an ornament alone.
The array of uniforms was such that a civilian became a distinguished object, much more a lady.
All would have gone according to the proverbial marriage-bell, I suppose, had there not been a slight palpable shadow over all of us from hearing vague stories of a lost battle in Florida, and from the thought that perhaps the very ambulances in which we rode to the ball were ours only until the wounded or the dead might tenant them.
General Gillmore only came, I supposed, to put a 