annot be cured must be endured," and in
unquestioned obedience to orders, we spread our blankets upon the hard,
dirty floor, and taking our huge knapsacks for pillows we wrapped our
mantles (poetry for army overcoats) about us and laid down to pleasant
dreams of home, and feather beds, and hair mattresses, and other comforts
and luxuries to which we had been so long accustomed as to have wholly
failed to appreciate them at their proper value. Truly in our case,
distance lent enchantment. But to come down to solid, matter-of-fact
prose, we didn't sleep much that night anyway. Whether it was the effects
of the heat of the preceding day when we were marching through Baltimore
at a "double quick," with those burdensome knapsacks breaking our backs,
or whether it was the souvenirs left by our comrades-in-arms who had
occupied that same floor the previous night, I cannot positively affirm,
but this one thing I know, that we _scratched_ out a miserable existence
until morning, when, after declining without thanks to regale ourselves
with the so-called coffee which was furnished us, which our boys affirmed
was poor water spoilt, and the turning of the cold shoulder upon the salt
junk which was so temptingly spread before us, we cheerfully obeyed the
order of our Colonel to "fall in," and were soon wending our way to East
Capitol hill, near the east branch of the Potomac, where, our tents not
having arrived, we encamped in the open air, which was far preferable to
spending a second night at the "Soldiers' Retreat." The soil where we
encamped was of a clayey nature, and the surface as free from moisture as
polishing powder, and when we awoke on the following morning we had very
much the appearance of having slept in an ash-pit.

We remained here but a day or two, when we received orders to join General
Casey's Division, and bidding adieu without regrets to "Camp Misery," as
our boys had named the spot, we were soon on our way across Chain Bridge,
and in due season found ourselves on the "sacred soil" of Virginia.

I can never forget a laughable scene which was enacted on Pennsylvania
avenue by Company B while on this march. We were on the extreme left of
the line. In front of a tonsorial saloon on the avenue our boys espied a
Dutchman who formerly carried on business in Pawtucket. The surprise at
the unexpected meeting was mutual on the part of the barber and the boys.
It was his habit when a customer entered his shop to inquire a