. I spent the day in
walking about the encampment, and seeing what was to be seen, for it was
all new to me.

Officers were riding over the ground, dressed in uniform, and mounted on
their splendid steeds: their plumes waving over their cocked-hats in true
military array. A band of music, as is usual, accompanied the soldiers.
There was also a "sham-fight," before the breaking up of the encampment,
and it was really terrifying to me, who had never seen a battle fought, to
witness two columns of troops drawn up, and, at the roll of the drum,
behold them engage in deadly conflict, to all appearance, and the smoke
curling up in a blackened mass toward heaven; and, above all, the
neighing of horses, with the feigned groans of the wounded and dying. I
inwardly prayed to God that those men might ever draw their weapons in a
feigned encounter.

The first night I spent at the encampment was one long to be remembered;
it was like the confusion of Babel. Of all the hideous noises I ever heard
none could exceed those made there that night. They fired guns, quarreled,
drank, and swore, till day light. There was such a crowd at the tavern
that I did not suppose I could get a bed, so I threw myself down upon a
door-step, and began to compose myself to sleep, when a man came and
wakened me, inquiring at the same time whose boy I was. I replied that I
lived with Mr. Tower. "Follow me," said he; I arose and followed him into
the house, where he procured for me a bed, to be shared with another
"boy," who had already occupied it.

I had just began to doze, when the explosion of firearms startled all in
the house. The keeper of the tavern ran up stairs in great alarm, and when
an examination was made, we found that a drunken fellow had discharged his
musket in the room below the one where we were sleeping, and that the ball
had passed up through the second floor and completely through the bed on
which I slept, to the roof, where, having passed through that also, rolled
from thence to the ground! And yet, strange as it may appear, no one was
injured, though the house was filled to overflowing with guests.

There were groups of disorderly and drunken men continually roaming over
the camp-ground at night, who seemed to have no other object than to annoy
others, and torment any one they might find sleeping, by shaking them, or,
if soundly asleep, dragging them out of their beds by their feet. Among
these thus annoyed by them was a physician