s old trade of carpenter, he brought "his saw and jack-plane
again into play, fashioned companies, officers and non-commissioned
officers out of maple blocks, and with these wooden-headed troops he
thoroughly mastered the infantry tactics in his quarters." There was
this advantage in his method, that his toy troops were thoroughly
manageable.

The next step was to organize a school for the officers of his regiment,
requiring thorough recitation in the tactics, while their teacher
illustrated the maneuvers by the blocks he had prepared for his own
instruction. He was obliged to begin with the officers, that they might
be qualified to assist him in instructing the men under their command.
He was then able to institute regimental, squad, skirmish, and bayonet
drill, and kept his men at these exercises from six to eight hours daily
till the Forty-second won the reputation of being the best drilled
regiment to be found in Ohio.

My boy readers will be reminded of the way in which he taught geometry
in one of his winter schools, preparing himself at night for the lesson
of the next day. I would like to call their attention also to the
thoroughness with which he did everything. Though previously ignorant of
military tactics he instructed his regiment in them thoroughly,
believing that whatever was worth doing at all was worth doing well.

He was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel, but by the time his organization
was completed he was promoted to the Colonelcy.

At last the preliminary work was completed. His men, an undisciplined
body when he took them in hand, had become trained soldiers, but as yet
they had not received what Napoleon III. called the "baptism of fire."
It is all very well to march and countermarch, and practice the ordinary
evolutions like militia-men at a muster, but how was the regiment, how
was its scholarly commander likely to act in the field?

On the 14th of December orders for the field were received by Colonel
Garfield's command, stationed at Camp Chase.

Then came the trial of parting with wife and mother and going forth to
battle and danger. To his mother, whose highest ambition had been that
her son should be a scholar, it was doubtless a keen disappointment that
his settled prospects should be so broken up; but she, too, was
patriotic, and she quietly said: "Go, my son, your life belongs to your
country."

Colonel Garfield's orders were to report to General Buell at Louisville.
He moved his regi