he observers could count something more
than two hundred. Then by squads and afterwards in what was intended as
a "regimental formation," they went through a series of marchings,
countermarchings and facings, with about the proficiency which would be
shown by the same number of entirely raw recruits, and with the same
proportion of the most obvious blunderings that used to be exhibited by
the "slab-companies" at the "general trainings" or "general musters" in
the country sections, when a lamentable caricature upon military spirit
was kept up, in the years following the War of 1812.

Not a musket was to be seen in the hands of one of these men, except the
few sentries. They "had not been furnished," as the explanation was sure
to be given afterwards when the regiment was discovered to be an
undisciplined mob! They would probably not be "furnished" until just at
the moment when the regiment should be forced to move, and then they
would be put into hands liable to be called on to use them in battle
within a week--those hands knowing no more of the management of the
deadly instrument of modern warfare, than so many Sioux or South Sea
Islanders might have known of watch-making or extracting the cube-root.

And yet with these men, and in this manner, the armies of the republic
were being recruited; and on the deeds in arms wrought by these men,
possibly in the very first conflict into which they were rushed like
huddled sheep, the eyes of the military nations of Europe were to be
turned with anxious interest. They were to fight, too, against a race of
men to whom deadly weapons had been familiar from childhood, and who
would consequently make soldiers, to the full extent of their
capability, with one-half the training which was to these Northern men
an absolute necessity! Is it any wonder that we have occasionally met
with a Bull Run or a Second Field of Manassas, with this shameful waste
of our opportunities and our war-material?

Smith and Brown left "Camp Lyon," before the completion of the "dress
parade," with a him consciousness of being painfully disenchanted in a
very important particular.

"Do you know, Smith" said Brown, as they were rolling along in the car,
homeward--"that I doubt whether there are three hundred men in that
regiment, absentees and all--instead of seven hundred as the papers
report?"

"Humph," said Smith, "it seems to be all a humbug together! But I wonder
what becomes of the extra pay issued t