Miscellang.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 488, 22 March 1881, Page 3

Miscellang.

A REMARKABLE SOLDIER.

One of the most remarkable private soldiers on either Bide in the late war was a young man named Tom Kelley, a private in the second Michigan infantry. The remarkable man began with his build. He had arms a full hand longer than any man who could be found. He had no more backbone than a snake, and could almost tie himself in a knot. Hβ could tell the date on a silver quarter held up twenty feet away, and he could hear every word of a conversation in a common tone of voice across an ordinary street. He could run half a mile as fast as any horse could gallop, and .«, there was a standing offer of 18 dol. to any man who could hold him down. On a bet of a box of sardines he once passed six sentinels within an hour. On tt another occasion he entered the colonel's tent, and brought away that officer's boots. When Tom's remarkable qualifications were discovered, he was detailed as a ecout and was changed from one department to another. In the capacity of spy he entered Bichmond three tinies. He entered Vicksburg and preached a seimon to the soldiers a week before the surrender. in New Orleans five days before that city was taken. He was a man who firmly believed that he could

not be killed by an enemy, and he governed his movements accordingly.

While under, the ; orders of General Hooker, kelley proved on several occasions that he could see further with the naked eye than any officer could with a field-glass. If he could get a place of concealment within fifty feet of a picket, he could catch the countersign. He visited Lookout Mountain, intending to spike as many of the Confederate guns as possible. Hia disguise was that of a farmer who had been driven from home by the Union forces. The enemy somehow got suspicious of him, and he was placed in the guard house for the night. There was a sentinel at the door and others near by standing guard over guns and stores, but it was air the same to Kelley. With an old tin plate for use as a shovel and scoop he burrowed out at the back end of the building, and walked up to two pieces of artillery and spiked both before any alarm was raised. When the eentinels began firing at him, he ran out of the camp, but before he was clear of it he had been fired on fifty times. Kelley was once captured when asleep by Missouri guerillas. When he opened his eyes he was surrounded by five or six wen on foot and others in the saddle. It was under a tree in an open field, and he had been tracked by a dog. As he rose up at their command he resorted to his wonderful skill as a gymnast. By dogding and twisting and jumping he got out of the crowd, pulled a man off his saddle, and would have escaped had not the dog fastened to his leg. He was then put under guard in a log house with only one room. Two sentinels sat at the door with revolvers in their hands and kept watch on his every movement. After an hour or two Kelley approached as if to offer them tobacco, and jumped clean over their heads like a deer. He had half a mile of open field to cross, and he crossed, it under the fire of a score of muskets and revolvers without being hit.