e wants a squad of eager,
active, pliant school-boys; and the more childlike these pupils are the
better. There is no trouble about the drill; they will surpass whites
in that. As to camp-life, they have little to sacrifice; they are better
fed, housed, and clothed than ever in their lives before, and they
appear to have few inconvenient vices. They are simple, docile, and
affectionate almost to the point of absurdity. The same men who stood
fire in open field with perfect coolness, on the late expedition, have
come to me blubbering in the most irresistibly ludicrous manner on being
transferred from one company in the regiment to another.

In noticing the squad-drills I perceive that the men learn less
laboriously than whites that "double, double, toil and trouble," which
is the elementary vexation of the drill-master, that they more rarely
mistake their left for their right, and are more grave and sedate while
under instruction. The extremes of jollity and sobriety, being greater
with them, are less liable to be intermingled; these companies can
be driven with a looser rein than my former one, for they restrain
themselves; but the moment they are dismissed from drill every tongue
is relaxed and every ivory tooth visible. This morning I wandered about
where the different companies were target-shooting, and their glee was
contagious. Such exulting shouts of "Ki! ole man," when some steady
old turkey-shooter brought his gun down for an instant's aim, and then
unerringly hit the mark; and then, when some unwary youth fired his
piece into the ground at half-cock such guffawing and delight, such
rolling over and over on the grass, such dances of ecstasy, as made the
"Ethiopian minstrelsy" of the stage appear a feeble imitation.

Evening. Better still was a scene on which I stumbled to-night.
Strolling in the cool moonlight, I was attracted by a brilliant light
beneath the trees, and cautiously approached it. A circle of thirty or
forty soldiers sat around a roaring fire, while one old uncle, Cato by
name, was narrating an interminable tale, to the insatiable delight of
his audience. I came up into the dusky background, perceived only by a
few, and he still continued. It was a narrative, dramatized to the
last degree, of his adventures in escaping from his master to the Union
vessels; and even I, who have heard the stories of Harriet Tubman, and
such wonderful slave-comedians, never witnessed such a piece of
acting. When I c