Townsend was a noted American war correspondent who wrote dispatches, travelogues, and other types of historical fiction dealing with America. He was also an acquaintance of Mark Twain's. From the intro: "So far from the first tale in this book being of political motive, it was written among the subjects of it, and read to several of them in 1864. Perhaps the only souvenir of refugee and "skedaddler" life abroad during the war ever published, its...