freight and cattle cars rudely fitted up, a part
of them at least, with rough pine boards for seats. The men of the
Twenty-Third Regiment having, up to this period of their existence,
missed somehow the disciplining advantages of "traveling in the
steerage," or as emigrants or cattle, cannot be expected to appreciate
at sight the luxury of the style of conveyance to which they are thus
suddenly introduced. But we tumble aboard and dispose ourselves for a
miserable night. A few of us are glum, and revolve horrible thoughts;
but the majority soon come to regard the matter as such a stupendous
swindle as to be positively ridiculous. They accordingly grow merry as
the night waxes, and make up in song what they lack of sleep.

_Friday, 19th._--The darkest night has its morrow. We reach Harrisburg
thankfully a little after daybreak, and bid adieu, with many an
ill-suppressed imprecation, to the ugly serpent that has borne us
tormentingly from Philadelphia. Just sixty-four hours have elapsed
since the orders were promulgated summoning the Brigade to arms. We are
marched at once to Camp Curtin, some three miles out of town, and in
the afternoon countermarched to town and thence across the Susquehanna
to the Heights of Bridgeport--the latter being accomplished through a
rain storm. As we enter the fort the Eighth and Seventy-First,
N.Y.S.N.G., which had got a few hours' start of us, move out, taking
the cars for Shippensburg on a reconnoissance.

II.

CAMP LIFE ON THE SUSQUEHANNA.

In hastening thus to the rescue of our suddenly imperiled government,
we gave ourselves to that government without reserve, except that our
term of service should not be extended beyond the period of the present
exigency. Ourselves stirred with unbounded enthusiasm as we fell into
line with other armed defenders of the Fatherland, we expected to find
the inhabitants of the menaced States, and especially the citizens of
Harrisburg, all on fire with the zeal of patriotism. We expected to see
the people everywhere mustering, organizing, arming; and the clans
pouring down from every quarter to the Border. At Harrisburg a camp had
indeed been established as a rendezvous, but no organized Pennsylvania
regiments had reported there for duty. The residents of the capital
itself appeared listless. Hundreds of strong men in the prime of life
loitered in the public thoroughfares, and gaped at our passing columns
as indifferently as if we had come as