es
'Company Q;' a splendid joke. The captain drills us as far as 'On the
right, by file, into line,' and apparently can get no farther. So we
think, and that the first lieutenant kn=ows twice much as the captain.
And, oh! how we come to hate Sergeant Files, and his hard, carking
voice, always rasping somebody about something! We have been in service
a month. The city is full of troops; the heights back are covered with
camps; the 'Fire Zouaves' have introduced the Five Points to our
acquaintance; General Blankhed is still giving passes to go to Richmond;
the enemy's pickets stare at ours from other end of Long Bridge; nobody
is hurt as yet. Presently comes an order constituting the 'American
Sharpshooters,' the 'Fisler Guards,' the Union Carbineers,' the 'Seward
Cadets,' and the 'Bulger Guards,' a battalion, to be known as the Ninth
Battalion (did I say there were only eight? no matter) of the First
Regiment of District of Columbia Volunteers, and to be commanded by
Major Johnson Heavysterne, the _beau ideal_ of a militia major--fat,
pompous, not much acquainted with military, but, to use his own
vocabulary, knowing right smart in the fish and cheese line. But let me
deal kindly with the honest old soul; he meant well, but he had bad
luck; and he made me, Private William Jenkins, the writer of these
disjointed phrases, sergeant-major of the battalion. Whereof, kind
reader, more anon: for here I left off my _scales_ and sewed on my
_chevrons_. (That is, she did. Please see PART II.)

THE SACRIFICE

The blood that flows for freedom is God's blood!
Who dies for man's redemption, dies with Christ!
The plan of expiation is unchanged:
And, as One died, supremely good, for all,
So one dies still, that many more may live.

So fall our saviours on the bloody field,
In deadly swamps, along the foul lagoons,
On the long march, in crowded hospitals,
Of wounds, of weariness, of pain and thirst,
Of wasting fevers and of sudden plagues,
Of pestilence, that lurks within the camp,
Of long home-sickness, and of hope deferred,
Of languishing, in hostile prisons chained--
And, with their blood, they wash the nation clean,
And furnish expiation for the sin
That those who slay them have been guilty of.

So God selects the noblest of the land:
He culls the qualities that are His own--
Our courage, patience, love of human kind,
Our strong devotion to the cause of Right,
Our noblest a