A BABY IN THE SIEGE
The war correspondents have had their say about the siege of Atlanta, and some of their remarks figure forth as history. They have presented the matter with technical diagrams, and in language flying beyond the reach of idiom into the regions of rhetoric; and the artists have followed close behind with illuminated crayons, turning the Chattahoochee Hills crosswise the horizon, and giving the muddy river a tendency to wash itself in the Pacific Ocean. These are but the tassels and embroideries that history decorates herself with in order to attract attention, and they are inevitable; for experience must serve a long and an arduous apprenticeship to life before it discovers that a fact is more imposing in its simplicity than in any other dress.
The imposing fact about the siege of Atlanta is that the besieged came to regard it as
