Taking my customary stroll last evening, I sauntered into Canal street, and suddenly found myself in a dense and expectant crowd. Several cheers being given upon my arrival, I naturally inferred that it was an ovation to _The Tribune_ correspondent; but native modesty, and a desire to blush unseen, restrained me from any oral public acknowledgment.
[Sidenote: TRIBUNE LETTERS.--GENERAL TWIGGS.]
Just then, an obliging by-stander corrected my misapprehension by assuring me that the demonstration was to welcome home General Daniel E. Twiggs--the gallant hero, you know, who, stationed in Texas to protect the Government property, recently betrayed it all into the hands of the Rebels, to "prevent bloodshed." His friends wince at the order striking his name from the army rolls as a coward and a traitor, and the universal execration heaped upon his treachery even in the border slave States.
They did their best to give him a flattering reception. The great thoroughfare was decked in its holiday attire. Flags were flying, and up and down, as far as the eye could reach, the balconies were crowded with spectators, and the arms of long files of soldiers glittered in the evening sunlight. One company bore a tattered and stained banner, which went through the Mexican war. Another carried richly ornamented colors, presented by the ladies of this city. There were Pelican flags, and Lone Star flags, and devices unlike any thing in the heavens above, the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth; but nowhere could I see the old National banner. It was well; on such occasion the Stars and Stripes would be sadly out of place.
[Sidenote: BRAXTON BRAGG.--MR. LINCOLN'S INAUGURAL.]
After a welcoming speech, pronouncing him "not only the soldier of courage, but the patriot of fidelity and honor," and his own response, declaring that _here_, at least, he would "never be branded as a coward and traitor," the ex-general rode through some of the principal streets in an open barouche, bareheaded, bowing to the spectators. He is a venerable-looking man, apparently of seventy. His large head is bald upon the top; but from the sides a few thin snow-white locks, utterly oblivious of the virtues of "the Twiggs Hair Dye,"[2] streamed in the breeze. He was accompanied in the carriage by General Braxton Bragg--the "Little-more-grape-Captain-Bragg" of Mexican war memory. By the way, persons who ought to know declare that General Taylor never used the expression, his actual language being: "Captain Bragg, give them----!"