Campaigns of a Non-Combatant | Page 6

keepsh it now."
"By right or by conquest?"
"By ze right of conquest," he said, laughing; and at once proposed to
sell me a bootjack and an India-rubber overcoat. I compromised upon a
haversack, which he filled with sandwiches and sardines, and which I
am bound to say fell apart in the course of the afternoon. The
watchmaker was an enterprising young fellow, who had resigned his
place in a large Broadway establishment, to speculate in cheap jewelry
and do itinerant repairing. He says that he followed the "Army
Paymasters, and sold numbers of watches, at good premiums, when the
troops had money." Soldiers, he informed me, were reckless
spendthrifts; and the prey of sutlers and sharpers. When there was

nothing at hand to purchase, they gambled away their wages, and most
of them left the service penniless and in debt. He thought it perfectly
legitimate to secure some silver while "going," but complained that the
value of his stock rendered him liable to theft and murder. "There are
men in every regiment," said he, "who would blow out my brains in
any lonely place to plunder me of these watches."
At this point, a young officer, in a fit of bacchanal laughter, staggered
rather roughly against me.
"Begurpardon," he said, with an unsteady bow, "never ran against
person in life before."
I smiled assuringly, but he appeared to think the offence unpardonable.
"Do asshu a, on honor of gentlemand officer, not in custom of behaving
offensively. Azo! leave it to my friends. Entirely due to injuries
received at battle Drainesville."
As the other gentlemen laughed loudly here, I took it for granted that
my apologist had some personal hallucination relative to that
engagement.
"What giggling for, Bob?" he said; "honor concerned in this matter,
Will! Do asshu a, fell under Colonel's horse, and Company A walked
over small of my back." The other officers were only less inebriated
and most of them spoke boastfully of their personal prowess at
Drainesville. This was the only engagement in which the Pennsylvania
Reserves had yet participated, and few officers that I met did not
ascribe the victory entirely to their own individual gallantry. I inquired
of these gentlemen the route to the new encampments of the Reserves.
They lay five miles south of the turnpike, close to the Loudon and
Hampshire railroad, and along both sides of an unfrequented lane. They
formed in this position the right wing of the Army of the Potomac, and
had been ordered to hold themselves in hourly readiness for an advance.
By this time, my friend S. came up, and leaving him to restore his
mortified body, I crossed the road to the churchyard and peered through
the open door into the edifice. The seats of painted pine had been

covered with planks, and a sick man lay above every pew. At the
ringing of my spurs in the threshold, some of the sufferers looked up
through the red eyes of fever, and the faces of others were spectrally
white. A few groaned as they turned with difficulty, and some shrank in
pain from the glare of the light. Medicines were kept in the altar-place,
and a doctor's clerk was writing requisitions in the pulpit. The
sickening smell of the hospital forbade me to enter, and walking across
the trampled yard, I crept through a rent in the paling, and examined the
huts in which the Reserves had passed the winter. They were built of
logs, plastered with mud, and the roofs of some were thatched with
straw. Each cabin was pierced for two or more windows; the beds were
simply shelves or berths; a rough fireplace of stones and clay
communicated with the wooden chimney; and the floors were in most
cases damp and bare. Streets, fancifully designated, divided the
settlement irregularly; but the tenements were now all deserted save
one, where I found a whole family of "contrabands" or fugitive slaves.
These wretched beings, seven in number, had escaped from a plantation
in Albemarle county, and travelling stealthily by night, over two
hundred miles of precipitous country, reached the Federal lines on the
thirteenth day. The husband said that his name was "Jeems," and that
his wife was called "Kitty;" that his youngest boy had passed the
mature age of eight months, and that the "big girl, Rosy," was "twelve
years Christmas comin'." While the troops remained at Langley's, the
man was employed at seventy-five cents a week to attend to an officer's
horse. Kitty and Rose cooked and washed for soldiers, and the boys ran
errands to Washington and return,--twenty-five miles! The eldest boy,
Jefferson, had been given the use of a crippled team-horse, and traded
in newspapers, but having confused ideas of the relative value of coins,
his profits were only moderate. The nag