e certain about the enemy's crossing
the Long Bridge, you know. The company, guard and all, is drilled
vigorously, in squads, for two hours. Then the unhappy fellows who are
to go home loiter themselves, with many wistful glances, out of the
building. Then the guard plays euchre, reads, reads aloud, sings,
fences, and drills. A few sleepy heads lie down in corners about one
A.M., and are not going to sleep, but nevertheless shortly complain of
being kept awake by the noise. 'Never mind,' growls the melancholy man
of the company; 'won't hear any of this to-morrow night. D----d glad to
go to sleep then.' The melancholy man, now as hereafter, is voted a
bore, but, as I presently discover, turns out to be pretty nearly right,
and achieves the sad triumph of being able to say, 'Told you so;
wouldn't believe me; now see.'--Daylight. No one has been asleep, yet,
strange to say, everyone has waked up and found everyone else snoring.
No one waits for _reveille_, this first morning. You stretch yourself,
and endeavor to rise. Which is you, and which the board floor? You
rather think this must be you that has just got up, because it aches so
down the grain, and its knots or eyes--yes, they are eyes--are so full
of sand. This must be how Rip Van Winkle felt after his nap in the
Catskills, you think. You wonder how those fellows Boyce and Tripp can
skylark so on an empty stomach. Three hours to breakfast. You police the
quarters with vigor. 'Heavens, what a dust! Open the windows, somebody;
and look here, Sergeant! the floor hasn't been sprinkled.' The sharp,
quick tones of the sergeant of the guard (more like the sound of a
tenpenny nail scratching mahogany than aught else in nature) soon set
matters right. You think you have surely swallowed your peck of dirt
that morning, and feel even more gastric than you usually do on an empty
stomach. You can go home to breakfast now: but you hear Johnny Todd's
cheery voice sing out; 'Fall in, cocktail squad!' and march off with a
score of your comrades to the nearest restaurant, which, finding just
open, the squad incontinently takes possession of. You take a cocktail,
a whiskey cocktail, with the edge of the green glass previously lemoned
and dipped in powdered sugar. 'Ah,' says Todd to everybody, and
everybody, to everybody else, including Todd, 'that goes to the right
place' (slapping it affectionately). Oh, reader, if wearer of p[)a]hnts,
did you ever meet with a decoction, infusion, or ot