front with
us, and though out for 'the emergency,' declares it will stay as long as
the 71st. So we all fraternize, hailing any member as '8th,' '71st,' or
'Battery,' and cheer when we pass each other. The 8th are good cheerers,
and though we outnumbered them, I think they outdid us in three times
three and a 'tiger,' the inevitable refrain. The 'tiger' (sounding
tig-a-h-h) is the test of a cheer. If the cheer be a spontaneous burst
of hearty good feeling, the tiger concentrates its energy, and is full
and prolonged--if it be only the cheer courteous or the cheer civil, the
tiger will fall off and die prematurely.

Just at dark we left camp, passed rapidly through the town, along the
turnpike about two miles, and halted in a cornfield beside the road,
where we formed line of battle. We received orders to 'load at will,'
and fire low. The 8th were on the opposite side of the road, and their
battery somewhere near us. After some time, nobody appearing, permission
was given to thrust our muskets by the bayonets in the ground; and soon
after, one by one, the men dropped off asleep. The evening had been
extremely sensational. The sudden departure, the rapid march, whither
and for what we knew not, yet full of momentary expectation; the orders
and preparations indicating the imminence of grim, perhaps ghastly work,
in the night hours; the line of men, stretching beyond sight in the
darkness, far from home, and, it might be, near to death, sleeping yet
waiting:--the total was singularly impressive.

Nevertheless, I too was soon asleep, and slept undisturbed till morning.
Then, rebels or no rebels, we must have breakfast. There was none to be
had in the regiment; but the farmhouses supplied us, and an ancient dame
intermitted packing her goods for flight, to cook the pork which made
part of my three days' rations. Then I stretched myself beneath the
shade of a roadside house within sound of orders, and having nothing
else on hand, went to sleep again.

I was now broken in. Camp rations I could eat; camp coffee, though
always _sans_ milk and often _sans_ sugar, I deemed good; a wash was a
luxury, not a necessity; and I could sleep anywhere.

When I was aroused, I found a barricade thrown up across the road, and a
force of contrabands digging a trench across the field. A cavalry picket
reported the enemy within half a mile, advancing. The citizens came out
from Carlisle to aid us, and we went in line into the trenches. Two me