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The good fortune to get hold of a copy of Shelley's Works. I read Queen Mob at once. It was fully equal to my expectations. I never read after a poet whose Sentiments so exactly corresponded with my own.

Wednesday Sept. 4th. Morning. I feel exceedingly joyful this morning. I am sitting by the Minnesota river just at the edge of the water. The Sun in his golden splendor has just risen. Hi rays are in glory reflected by the white sand rocks that are crowned by the almost classic walls of Ft. Snelling. Oh! the scene is too beautiful for description. Evening. We had a religious discussion to day with our drill Sergeant who it seems is afflicted with the halucination that there is a God. * While we were resting he said something about God when Wentworth the long haired added: "That is, if there is any God." The Sergeant seemed amazed and in true Christian spirit exclaimed "you brute." A discussion followed in which the Sergt. was worsted. When the confab ended out Christian friend had become quite too humble to call an Infidel a brute simply because he did not agree with him. Lizzie Hurvey and W.F. Atkinson visited the fort today. I attended the Lyceum(?) which the boys of 2d Regiment have established. Their business matters wee carried on rather clumsily when compared with Highland Park. Thursday Sept. 5th Our drill master and most of the man have been gone away to day. Consequently we had no drill. We are now sixteen in number. I have had an opportunity to read some to day. I was reading in a book of visionary Imagination entitled A Panorama of Time by David A. Moor. It belongs to a young man by the name of Standish who thinks it is a great work. But I withhold my oppinion until I have finished reading it. I visited what I shall term the Elysian.

• I was a rank Atheist in those days, though not so much so now. In short I believe I am the farthest thing from it in the world.

MARGINALIA: Christians often by using such expressions as "you fool, you brute" to infidels show them lack of the first principles of Christianity and give their enemies a very powerful weapon to use against them.