all. There
is great activity everywhere, as preparations have already commenced for
the march north. Our camp "mess" has been started, and we will be very
comfortable, I think, with a good soldier cook and Cagey to take care of
the tents. I am making covers for the bed, trunk, and folding table,
of dark-blue cretonne with white figures, which carries out the color
scheme of the folding chairs and will give a little air of cheeriness
to the tent, and of the same material I am making pockets that can be
pinned on the side walls of the tent, in which various things can be
tucked at night. These covers and big pockets will be folded and put in
the roll of bedding every morning.

There are not enough ambulances to go around, so I had my choice between
being crowded in with other people, or going in a big army wagon by
myself, and having had one experience in crowding, I chose the wagon
without hesitation. Faye is having the rear half padded with straw and
canvas on the sides and bottom, and the high top will be of canvas drawn
over "bows," in true emigrant fashion. Our tent will be folded to form
a seat and placed in the back, upon which I can sit and look out through
the round opening and gossip with the mules that will be attached to
the wagon back of me. In the front half will be packed all of our camp
furniture and things, the knockdown bed, mess-chest, two little stoves
(one for cooking), the bedding which will be tightly rolled in canvas
and strapped, and so on. Cagey will sit by the driver. There is not one
spring in the wagon, but even without, I will be more comfortable than
with Mrs. Hayden and three small children. They can have the ambulance
to themselves perhaps, and will have all the room. I thought of Billie,
too. He can be picketed all the time in the wagon, but imagine the
little fellow's misery in an ambulance with three restless children for
six or eight hours each day!

Hal is with us--in fact, I can hardly get away from the poor dog, he is
so afraid of being separated from me again. When we got to the station
at Pittsburg he was there with Cagey, and it took only one quick glance
to see that he was a heart-broken, spirit-broken dog. Not one spark was
left of the fire that made the old Hal try to pull me through an immense
plate-glass mirror, in a hotel at Jackson, Mississippi, to fight his
own reflection (the time the strange man offered one hundred and fifty
dollars for him), and certainly he was not