, smelt of meat,
tasted hard bread, dived into dinner pots, examined coffee grounds to
see whether any of the genuine article had accidentally got mixed with
the post supply of burnt peas. The surgeon commenced vaccinating the
men, and taking precautions against every possible malady, old age, I
believe, included. Meanwhile the adjutant and the sergeant-major shut
themselves up in a back room like a counting house, and were kept busy
copying muster rolls, posting huge ledger-like books, making out daily
and nightly returns, receiving and answering elaborate letters from the
official personages in the next building. The company officers and men
were assigned their regular hours for drill, as well as for everything
else that men could think of doing in barracks. In short, we found
ourselves all drawn into the operations of a vast, cumbrous, slow-moving
machine, with a great many more cogs than drivers, through which no
regiment or any other body could pass rapidly. The time required in our
case was nearly three months.

How much of this delay was necessary or beneficial I leave for wiser
military critics than myself to discuss. The complaint it awakened at
the time has almost been forgotten in the glory of the achievements
which followed when the great army actually began to move. Perhaps it is
remembered only by those who mourn the brave young hearts that never
reached the battle field, but perished in the inglorious conflict with
disease and idleness. Few appreciate the fearful loss suffered from
these causes, unless they were present from day to day, watching the
regular morning reports, or meeting the frequent burial squads that
thronged the road to the cemetery. Even in a place like St. Louis, with
amply provided hospitals, and all the appliances of medical skill at
hand, men died at a rate which would have carried off half the army
before its three years' service expired. And of these deaths by far the
greater portion were the direct consequence of idleness and its
consequent evils in camp. The healthiest body of troops I saw in
Missouri were busy night and day with scouting parties, and living in
their tents upon a bleak hilltop, ten miles from the nearest hospital or
surgeon. When their regiment was concentrated after four months'
service, this company alone marched in the hundred and one men it had
brought from home, not a single man missing or on the sick list.
Perhaps another such instance could scarcely be fou