her mixture
whatsoever, vinous, alcoholic, or maltic, with or without sugar, that
did _not_ go to the right place? And if there was a fault, wasn't it in
the addition of a trifle too much lemon peel? The crowd takes another of
the same sort. You take another. Then you wish you hadn't.

You go to the office that day, for, in common with two-thirds of the
company, you are a clerk in one of the Departments as well as a soldier;
and you can think and talk of nothing but the war. The oldsters quiz
your enthusiasm unmercifully, and cause your complexion to assume a red
and gobbling appearance, and your conversation to limp into
half-incoherent feebleness. Nevertheless everyone is very kind to you,
for you are a great pet with the old fogies--their prize 'Jack;' and
even old Mr. Gruff rasps down his tones, so that those harsh accents
seem to pat you on the back. Your handwriting, usually so firm and easy,
quavers a little, and exhibits more of the influence of the biceps
muscle than of your accustomed light play of the wrist and fingers. But,
you think, it's the rifle that does it, and are rather proud of this.

_Second night._ You rush down after an early dinner, in rash anxiety to
be drilled. Arriving very red and hot at the armory, you find bales of
straw and boxes on the sidewalk in front, and hear dreadful rumors that
our armory is to be taken away; that we are to have regular barracks,
and live there all the time; that we are to draw rations, and cook them.
Dismay is on every face. The melancholy man alone seems not to be
jostled from his habitual sad composure: he explains to the inquiring,
doubting crowd that the ration consists of 'one and a quarter pounds of
fresh beef or three quarters of a pound of salt beef, pork, or bacon,
fourteen ounces of flour or twelve ounces of hard bread, with eight
pounds of coffee, ten of sugar, ten of rice or eight quarts of beans,
four quarts of vinegar, four pounds of soap, one and a quarter pounds
candles, and two quarts of salt, to the hundred rations. But you won't
get fresh meat often, nor yet flour, and I reckon you'll have to take
beans instead of rice pretty much all the time, now't South Car'lina's
out.' _We_ eat salt pork! or beans either, except very occasionally.
There began to be serious symptoms of mutiny. Fippany and one or two
others declaimed so violently against the outrage, that the more
enthusiastic of us felt bound to use our influence to prevent the spread
of a d