e all know, but there was salt beef in abundance and
bread and potatoes and coffee. The country boys sorely missed their
daily pie, but there was no grumbling; the beef and potatoes were
cooked in the company's kitchen, and such were the innate good manners
of the cooks that the officers were served first out of the rations of
the men.

But I anticipate. Prior to the issue of the clothing, and while the
affairs of the camp were conducted in this go-as-you please manner,
more civil than military, one evening the Colonel arrived, a West
Pointer, and recently from service in the regular army in the field.
At once there seemed to be a general impression throughout the camp,
which cannot perhaps be expressed better than by the use of a phrase
common on that ship-building coast, "that there was the devil to pay
and no pitch hot."

The Colonel, a thoroughly trained soldier, saw things, to him new and
strange, and perhaps with a prejudiced eye. It was his first
experience with volunteers, and he found them in their most immature
condition. The respectable citizen who seemed to be half loafing,
half on guard at the Headquarters' tent did not salute, and, in fact,
had nothing military to salute with, but cheerfully remarked "How do
you do, Colonel." Him the Colonel regarded as a villain of the deepest
dye and perhaps as a fool into the bargain. But this was all of a
piece with the general appearance of the camp, so far as the Colonel
saw it. Once in the tent he sent an orderly disguised as an honest
citizen of the State, and who did not know, in fact, that he was an
orderly, for the officer of the day. When that friend appeared, the
Colonel propounded questions to him which he had never heard before,
and never dreamed of. If the Colonel had inquired about hexameter
verse or the volume of the cycloid, he might have obtained perhaps
prompt and correct answers. But concerning the details of guard
mounting and the duties of his office, the embryo Captain and Officer
of the Guard was as ignorant as a spring chicken; and after some
fruitless pursuit of information the Colonel expressed the opinion
that it was "A hell of a regiment," and terminated the interview. The
officer of the day went out with the impression that he had smelled
something sulphurous, and that the Colonel was correct in his location
of the regiment.

However, the men were speedily put into uniform, company books
were distributed, and there was a scramble, under