steamboat
that comes up for coal brings out spy-glasses and conjectures, and
'Dar's de Fourf New Hampshire,'--for when that comes, it is said, we
go. Meanwhile we hear stirring news from Florida, and the men are very
impatient to be off. It is remarkable how much more thoroughly they look
at things as soldiers than last year, and how much less as home-bound
men,--the South-Carolinians, I mean, for of course the Floridians would
naturally wish to go to Florida.

"But in every way I see the gradual change in them, sometimes with a
sigh, as parents watch their children growing up and miss the droll
speeches and the confiding ignorance of childhood. Sometimes it comes
over me with a pang that they are growing more like white men,--less
naive and less grotesque. Still, I think there is enough of it to last,
and that their joyous buoyancy, at least, will hold out while life does.

"As for our destination, our greatest fear is of finding ourselves
posted at Hilton Head and going no farther. As a dashing Irish officer
remarked the other day, 'If we are ordered away anywhere, I hope it will
be either to go to Florida or else stay here!'"

"Sublime uncertainties again!

"After being ordered in from picket, under marching orders; after the
subsequent ten days of uncertainty; after watching every steamboat that
came up the river, to see if the Fourth New Hampshire was on board,--at
last the regiment came.

"Then followed another break; there was no transportation to take us. At
last a boat was notified.

"Then General Saxton, as anxious to keep us as was the regiment to
go, played his last card in small-pox, telegraphing to department
head-quarters that we had it dangerously in the regiment. (N. B. All
varioloid, light at that, and besides, we always have it.)

"Then the order came to leave behind the sick and those who had been
peculiarly exposed, and embark the rest next day.

"Great was the jubilee! The men were up, I verily believe, by three
in the morning, and by eight the whole camp was demolished or put in
wagons, and we were on our way. The soldiers of the Fourth New Hampshire
swarmed in; every board was swept away by them; there had been a
time when colored boards (if I may delicately so express myself) were
repudiated by white soldiers, but that epoch had long since passed.
I gave my new tent-frame, even the latch, to Colonel Bell; ditto
Lieutenant-Colonel to Lieutenant-Colonel.

"Down we marched, the men singi