r cavalry scouts had captured some of our
foraging parties in Wills valley. The air was full of flying rumors.
Wagons are being packed, camps are broken up, and there is a general
hubbub everywhere. But your old soldier is always ready at a moment's
notice. The assembly is sounded; form companies, and we are ready for
a march, or a fight, or a detail, or anything. If we are marched a
thousand miles or twenty yards, it is all the same. The private soldier
is a machine that has no right to know anything. He is a machine that
moves without any volition of his own. If Edison could invent a wooden
man that could walk and load and shoot, then you would have a good sample
of the private soldier, and it would have this advantage--the private
soldier eats and the wooden man would not.

We left Chattanooga, but whither bound we knew not, and cared not;
but we marched toward Chickamauga and crossed at Lee & Gordon's mill.

THE BULL OF THE WOODS

On our way to Lafayette from Lee & Gordon's mill, I remember a ludicrous
scene, almost bordering on sacrilege. Rosecrans' army was very near us,
and we expected before three days elapsed to be engaged in battle.
In fact, we knew there must be a fight or a foot race, one or the other.
We could smell, as it were, "the battle afar off."

One Sabbath morning it was announced that an eloquent and able LL. D.,
from Nashville, was going to preach, and as the occasion was an
exceedingly solemn one, we were anxious to hear this divine preach from
God's Holy Word; and as he was one of the "big ones," the whole army was
formed in close column and stacked their arms. The cannon were parked,
all pointing back toward Chattanooga. The scene looked weird and
picturesque. It was in a dark wilderness of woods and vines and
overhanging limbs. In fact, it seemed but the home of the owl and the
bat, and other varmints that turn night into day. Everything looked
solemn. The trees looked solemn, the scene looked solemn, the men looked
solemn, even the horses looked solemn. You may be sure, reader, that we
felt solemn.

The reverend LL. D. had prepared a regular war sermon before he left home,
and of course had to preach it, appropriate or not appropriate; it was
in him and had to come out. He opened the service with a song. I did
remember the piece that was sung, but right now I cannot recall it to
memory; but as near as I can now recollect here is his prayer, _verbatim
et literatim_: