, as I stammered a reply. Led to a cabin close at hand, my pass
was examined by candle-light, and I learned that the nearest camp of the
Reserves was only a mile farther on, and the regiment of which I was in
quest about two miles distant. After another half hour, I reached Ord's
brigade, whose tents were pitched in a fine grove of oaks; the men
talking, singing, and shouting, around open air fires; and a battery of
brass Napoleons unlimbered in front, pointing significantly to the West
and South. For a mile and a half I rode by the light of continuous
camps, reaching at last the quarters of the ----th, commanded by a
former newspaper associate of mine, with whom I had gone itemizing,
scores of times. His regiment had arrived only the same afternoon, and
their tents were not yet pitched. Their muskets were stacked along the
roadside, and the men lay here and there wrapped in their blankets, and
dozing around the fagots. The Colonel was asleep in a wagon, but roused
up at the summons of his Adjutant, and greeting me warmly, directed the
cook to prepare a supper of coffee and fried pork. Too hungry to feel
the chafing of my sores and bruises, I fell to the oleaginous repast
with my teeth and fingers, and eating ravenously, asked at last to be
shown to my apartments. These consisted of a covered wagon, already
occupied by four teamsters, and a blanket which had evidently been in
close proximity to the hide of a horse. A man named "Coggle," being
nudged by the Colonel, and requested to take other quarters, asked
dolorously if it was time to turn out, and roared "woa," as if he had
some consciousness of being kicked. When I asked for a pillow, the
Colonel laughed, and I had an intuition that the man "Coggle" was
looking at me in the darkness with intense disgust. The Colonel said
that he had once put a man on double duty for placing his head on a
snowball, and warned me satirically that such luxuries were preposterous
in the field. He recommended me not to catch cold if I could help it,
but said that people in camp commonly caught several colds at once, and
added grimly that if I wished to be shaved in the morning, there was a
man close by, who had ground a sabre down to the nice edge of a razor,
and who could be made to accommodate me. There were cracks in the bottom
of the wagon, through which the cold came like knives, and I was
allotted a space four feet in length, by three feet in width.

Being six feet in height, my rel