and
revealed by jutting headlands and retreating intervales, loses its
proper character and becomes to the eye a cluster of lakes embosomed in
woods. Of these lakes you may count ten or a dozen.

In the first days of our tent life, before the hillside had become a
nuisance, it was pleasant, of a warm forenoon, after the morning drill
was over, to sit under the trees at the foot of the camp, and catch the
cool breeze as it crept up the bluff. Here the news was read; here the
rations were eaten and the siesta enjoyed,--though stay-at-homes may
think the latter an absurdly superfluous luxury, taking into
consideration the quality of the former! Here the letters from home--so
welcome to the soldier--were devoured again, and with his inverted
plate for a writing desk, roughly answered. Here some dreamed reveries,
and gazed across the river anxiously homeward, remembering the
advancing columns of the enemy and the perils of our situation. Here we
discussed the cupidity and poltroonery of the Harrisburgers, the
ever-shifting probabilities of the campaign, the loveliness of the
landscape, the demoralizing influences of camp life, be it never so
guarded, and the vivid contrasts of home comforts and refinements with
the coarseness and discomforts of our present lot.

It would be pleasant to rehearse the many scenes and events which
filled up our days in camp:--the duties of the guard, alternately
roasted under the glaring sun of the parapet, and suffocated in the
crowded guard-tent; the varied employments of the police,--the
scavengers and involuntary retainers of the day,--now scrambling in
irregular file down the bluff carrying pails and canteens for water,
now bearing from the commissariat huge armfuls of bread, or boxes of
hard tack, or quarters of fresh beef, or sides of less appetizing
bacon, now "putting things to rights" in the street of the company, and
called on all day long for multitudinous odd little jobs; the foraging
parties dragnetting the country round for sheep, poultry, eggs, milk,
and the like,--and this not to the owner's loss be it remembered; the
morning wash in the Susquehanna; the evening swim; the drills and dress
parades; the half-holiday in Harrisburg, whose baths and restaurants
and shops, whose fair ladies, (where there were cherry-trees in the
garden!), whose verandahs with easy chair and a Havana and quiet, made
the place to us a soldiers' paradise; and this notwithstanding the mean
spirit of th