rm. The rule for challenging, it used to be said, was to 'fire
three times, and then cry 'halt!' instead of the reverse, as prescribed
in the regulations.

When the order--long anticipated--for actually invading Virginia
arrived, then was there excitement. Every man felt the premonition of
battle, and nerved himself for conflict. As we marched down to Long
Bridge, at midnight, perfect silence prevailed. Breaths were suspended,
footfalls were as light as snowflakes, orders were given in hollow
whispers. We placed our feet on the 'sacred soil' with more emotion than
the Normans felt when landing in England, or the Pilgrims at Plymouth.
This was war--the real, genuine thing. But our expectations were not
realized. As the 'grand army' advanced, the scattered rebel pickets
withdrew. The only fatality of the campaign was the death of the gallant
but indiscreet Ellsworth. We had our first experience of lying out doors
in our blankets. How vainglorious we felt over it! Many a poor fellow
complained jocosely of the hardship and exposure, whom since I have seen
perfectly content to obtain a few pine boughs to keep him from being
submerged in an abyss of mud. Many, alas! have gone to a couch where
their sleep will be no more broken by the reveille of drum and fife and
bugle--in the trenches of Yorktown, in the thickets of Williamsburg, in
the morasses of the Chickahominy, on the banks of the Antietam, at the
foot of those fatal heights at Fredericksburg, in the wilderness of
Chancellorsville, on the glorious ridge of Gettysburg. Comrades of the
bivouac and the mess! ye are not forgotten in that sleep upon the fields
where swept the infernal tide of battle, obliterating so much glorious
life, leaving so much desolation! Even amid the roar of cannon, exulting
in their might for destruction, amid the shrieking of the merciless
shells, amid the blaze of the deadly musketry, memories of you occur to
us. We resolve that your lives shall not have been sacrificed in vain.
And in these long, dreary, monotonous days of winter, as the sleet
rattles on our frail canvas covering, and the wind roars in our rude log
chimneys, while the jests go around and the song arises, thoughts of the
battle fields of the past cross our minds--we recall the incidents of
fierce conflicts--we say, there and there fell----, no nobler fellows
ever lived! A blunt and hasty epitaph, but the desultory vicissitudes of
a soldier's life permit no other--we expect no oth