own 'small Latin and less Greek' into the
young Shakspeares of a Western college, when the appointment of a friend
to the command of the ----th Iowa regiment opened to me a place upon his
staff. Three days afterward, in one of the rough board-shanties of Camp
McClellan, I was making preparations for my first dress parade. The less
said of the _dress_ of that parade, the better. There was no lack of
comfortable clothing, but every man had evidently worn the suit he was
most willing to throw away when his Uncle Samuel presented him with a
new one; and a regiment of such suits drawn up in line, made but a sorry
figure in comparison with the smartly uniformed ----th, which had just
left the ground. Their colonel, in the first glory of his sword and
shoulder straps, was replaced by a very rough-looking individual, with a
shabby slouched hat pushed far back on his head, and a rusty overcoat,
open just far enough to show the place where a cravat might have been.
It was very plain, as he stood there with his arms folded, thin lips
compressed, and gray eyes hardly visible under their shaggy brows, that
whether he _looked_ the colonel or not was the last thought likely to
trouble him. I fancied that he did, in spite of all, and that he saw a
great deal of good stuff in the party-colored rows before him, which he
would know how to use when the right moment came: subsequent events
proved that I was not mistaken. The regiment had no reason to be ashamed
of their rough colonel, even when the two hundred that were left of them
laid down their arms late in the afternoon of that bloody Sabbath at
Shiloh, on the very spot where the swelling tide of rebels had beaten
upon them like a rock all day long.

But these after achievements are no part of my present story. The more
striking passages of this great war for freedom will be well and fully
told. Victories like Donelson, death-struggles like that on the plains
of Shiloh, will take their place in ample proportions on the page of
history. As years roll on they will stand out in strong relief, and be
the mountain tops which receding posterity will still recognize when all
the rest has sunk beneath the horizon. It were well that some record
should also be made of the long and dull days and weeks and months that
intervened between these stirring incidents: at least that enough should
be told of them to remind our children that they existed, and in this as
in all other wars, made up the great