Capturing A Locomotive

As the writer looked up from the manuscript page on a warm March afternoon of 1862, a very busy, and occasionally an amusing scene was presented. I was seated on a gentle, wooded slope which led down to the clear and quiet stream of Stone River, in Tennessee. Not being at that time "on duty," I had strolled away from the tents which whitened the level fields above, and was passing an hour in the pleasant task of preparing "war correspondence" for the Steubenville Herald. Now and then I lifted my eyes to watch the work in progress a few yards farther down the stream.