the regiment were
sumptuously provided for. At the Astor House, the field and staff
officers were entertained in a manner that left nothing to be desired.

Once more on the march, the regiment passed through the crowded streets,
everywhere receiving welcome plaudits until they reached the ferry that
conducted them to Hoboken, and the places en route to Baltimore and
Washington. As we passed into the ferry boats to cross the river, a
voice was heard above the tumult of the place and hour, "Good luck to
you, boys, but some of you will never return by this route;" a
prediction speedily fulfilled. Within about twenty-four hours, three of
our number had been transferred to a higher department.

The passage through Delaware to Philadelphia was not marked by any
incidents worthy of notice. Their long and weary pilgrimage had begun to
change a brisk, wide-awake regiment into a common-place body of weary
pilgrims, glad to find a shelter, without much questioning as to what it
might be. Quarters were assigned us in the Gerard House which happened
at that time to be unoccupied. For a brief period quiet ruled the hour,
and the weary soldier had begun his dreams of home and happiness long
before he was ready to stretch his limbs upon the mattresses that
covered the floors of the spacious hotel.

Suddenly the "Long-roll" was heard echoing along the streets and through
the halls of the Gerard House. The accoutrements and garments that had
been doffed in readiness for sleep were hastely resumed; and at the word
"Fall in," every man was in his place.

The "weight of affliction" in this crisis fell upon the field and staff
officers. They had but just assembled in the drawing-room of the
Continental Hotel, and gone through with those preliminary forms that
are quite as indicative of a good appetite as of good manners, and were
quiet taking their places at the table, amid the sumptuous surroundings
of a dining hall at that time scarcely equalled on the continent, when
Col. Jones entered the apartment, with the abrupt salutation,
"Gentlemen, to your posts; we start for Baltimore immediately, the
regiment awaits the order to march." "_Vae mihi_!" the writer of
this paper felt that _he_ might, under the circumstances of the
moment, appropriate a few minutes of time's rapid flight to contemplate
in sorrow and silence the scene of disappointment and woe. The little he
still retained of classic lore brought back images of the Harpies, as he