Campaigns of a Non-Combatant | Page 8

itemizing, scores
of times. His regiment had arrived only the same afternoon, and their
tents were not yet pitched. Their muskets were stacked along the
roadside, and the men lay here and there wrapped in their blankets, and
dozing around the fagots. The Colonel was asleep in a wagon, but
roused up at the summons of his Adjutant, and greeting me warmly,
directed the cook to prepare a supper of coffee and fried pork. Too
hungry to feel the chafing of my sores and bruises, I fell to the
oleaginous repast with my teeth and fingers, and eating ravenously,
asked at last to be shown to my apartments. These consisted of a

covered wagon, already occupied by four teamsters, and a blanket
which had evidently been in close proximity to the hide of a horse. A
man named "Coggle," being nudged by the Colonel, and requested to
take other quarters, asked dolorously if it was time to turn out, and
roared "woa," as if he had some consciousness of being kicked. When I
asked for a pillow, the Colonel laughed, and I had an intuition that the
man "Coggle" was looking at me in the darkness with intense disgust.
The Colonel said that he had once put a man on double duty for placing
his head on a snowball, and warned me satirically that such luxuries
were preposterous in the field. He recommended me not to catch cold if
I could help it, but said that people in camp commonly caught several
colds at once, and added grimly that if I wished to be shaved in the
morning, there was a man close by, who had ground a sabre down to
the nice edge of a razor, and who could be made to accommodate me.
There were cracks in the bottom of the wagon, through which the cold
came like knives, and I was allotted a space four feet in length, by three
feet in width.
Being six feet in height, my relation to these Procrustean quarters was
most embarassing; but I doubled up, chatteringly, and lay my head on
my arm. In a short time I experienced a sensation akin to that of being
guillotined, and sitting bolt upright, found the teamsters in the soundest
of Lethean conditions. As the man next to me snored very loudly, I
adopted the brilliant idea of making a pillow of his thigh; which
answered my best expectations. I was aroused after a while, by what I
thought to be the violent hands of this person, but which, to my great
chagrin, proved to be S., intent upon dividing my place with me.
Resistance was useless. I submitted to martyrdom with due resignation,
but half resolved to go home in the morning, and shun, for the future,
the horrible romance of camps.
CHAPTER III.
A GENERAL UNDER THE MICROSCOPE.
When I awoke at Colonel Taggert's tent the morning afterward, I had
verified the common experience of camps by "catching several colds at

once," and felt a general sensation of being cut off at the knees. Poor S.,
who joined me at the fire, states that he believed himself to be tied in
knots, and that he should return afoot to Washington. Our horses
looked no worse, for that would have been manifestly impossible. We
were made the butts of much jesting at breakfast; and S. said, in a spirit
of atrocity, that camp wit was quite as bad as camp "wittles." I bade
him adieu at five o'clock A. M., when he had secured passage to the
city in a sutler's wagon. Remounting my own fiery courser, I bade the
Colonel a temporary farewell, and proceeded in the direction of
Meade's and Reynold's brigades. The drum and fife were now beating
reveillé, and volunteers in various stages of undress were limping to
roll-call. Some wore one shoe, and others appeared shivering in their
linen. They stood ludicrously in rank, and a succession of short, dry
coughs ran up and down the line, as if to indicate those who should
escape the bullet for the lingering agonies of the hospital. The ground
was damp, and fog was rising from the hollows and fens. Some signal
corps officers were practising with flags in a ploughed field, and negro
stewards were stirring about the cook fires. A few supply wagons that I
passed the previous day were just creaking into camp, having travelled
most of the night. I saw that the country was rude, but the farms were
close, and the dwellings in many cases inhabited. The vicinity had
previously been unoccupied by either army, and rapine had as yet
appropriated only the fields for camps and the fences for fuel. I was
directed to the headquarters of Major-General M'Call,--a cluster of wall
tents in the far corner