into
less space than they had been created to fill. Two companies had to be
packed into each department intended for one. As for 'field and staff,'
they were worse off than the privates, and took their first useful
lesson in the fact that they were by no means such distinguished
individuals in the large army as they had been when showing off their
new uniforms at home. It must have been comforting to over-sensitive
privates to hear how colonels and quartermasters were snubbed in their
turn by the 'general staff.' The regimental headquarters, where these
crest-fallen dignitaries should have laid their weary heads, were
tenanted by Captains A., who had a pretty wife with him, and B., who
gave such nice little suppers, and C., whose mother was first cousin to
the ugly half-breed that blew the general's trumpet from the roof of the
great house in the centre. Wherefore the colonel, the surgeon, the
chaplain, the quartermaster, and the 'subscriber' were content to spread
their blankets for the first night with a brace of captains, on the
particularly dirty floor of Company F., and dream those 'soldier dreams'
in which Mrs. Soldier and two or three little soldiers--assorted
sizes--run down to the garden gate to welcome the hero home again, while
guardian angels clap their wings in delight and take a receipt for him
as 'delivered in good order and well-conditioned' to the deities that
preside over the domestic altar.

Such dreams as these were easy matters for most of us, who had no
experience. With our regimental colors fresh from the hands of the two
inevitable young ladies in white, who had presented them (with remarks
suitable to the occasion), we saw nothing before us but a march of
double quick to 'glory or the grave.' Luckily we had cooler heads among
us: men who had fought in Mexico, camped in the gulches of California,
drilled hordes of Indians in South America, led men in desperate
starving marches over the plains. These went about making us comfortable
in a very prosaic, practical way. The first call for volunteers from the
ranks was not to defend a breach or lead a forlorn hope, as we had
naturally expected, but--for carpenters. They were set to knocking down
the clumsy bunks in the men's quarters and rebuilding them in more
convenient shape, piercing the roof for ventilators, building shanties
for the dispensary and the quartermaster's stores. Colonel and chaplain
made a daily tour of the cook rooms and commissary