The characters in Joseph Altsheler's "Before the Dawn" have also fallen upon "bluggy" times; but, compared with John Oxenham, Mr. Altsheler is evidently a man of peace. He has added another to the grist of Civil War stories, but he has gone a little aside from the beaten path, and has given us a story of the fall of Richmond, of the wreck of the old regime, of the death-struggle of the Confederacy...