mmunition and food supply; use of artillery in attack and
defense; the proper method of employing the telegraph in the war; and a
thousand and one things relative to the machine militaire were gone
over. All this time we were slumbering over a smoldering volcano, and on
February 16, 1898, the eruption broke loose; the good ship _Maine_ was
destroyed in Havana harbor, and the feelings of the people, already
drawn to the breaking point by the inhuman cruelties of Spain towards
her colonies near our own shores, burst with a vehemence that portended,
in unmistakable language, the rending asunder of the once proud kingdom
of Spain. The army wanted a war; the navy wanted it, the whole
population wanted it and here it was within our grasp. It was the
dawning of a new day for the United States; a new empire was being born
in the Western hemisphere. The feverish preparations attendant upon the
new conditions are of too recent date to need any sketching here.

When it was finally determined that the time had arrived for the
assembling of the small but efficient regular army, I was stationed with
my regiment at Fort Wayne, Michigan. Like all other troops, we were at
the post ready for the start. The pistol cracked on the 15th of April,
and on the 19th we started. Mobile, Alabama, was our objective where we
arrived on the 22nd of the month. Here began the ceaseless preparation
for the part the regiment was to play in the grand drama of war that was
to follow, all this camp life and concentration being but the prologue.

The camp was a most beautiful one, the weather pleasant, and it was
indeed a most inspiring sight to see the long unbroken lines of blue go
swinging by, keeping absolute time and perfect alignment to the
inspiring strains of some air like "Hot time in the old town to-night,"
or "The stars and stripes forever."

I had started in with my regiment and expected to remain on duty with it
until the end of the war, sharing all its perils and hardships, doing my
part in the fighting, and partaking of any of the renown it might
achieve should the Dons ever be met. But "Man proposes and God
disposes," and on the afternoon of May 21st, I was sitting in my tent
correcting some manuscript when a very bright-eyed colored newsboy came
along and said:

"Buy a paper, cap'n."

That was the day that a wild rumor had been in circulation that Sampson
had met Cervera in the Bahama Channel and completely smashed him, so I
laid down m