of
the Antietam creek, and so pleasant was the duty that the regiment
petitioned to be allowed to remain until the army moved, to which
request General Neill very graciously assented. Our picketing on the
Antietam became one of the bright sports in the history of our
campaigning. We were a mile in advance of the other troops, and the
picket line was two miles long, so that we were not at all crowded. The
weather was fine, the country delightful, and the people kind and
hospitable. The most friendly relations sprang up at once between the
people and the soldiers, the inhabitants supplying the boys with
luxuries, and taking them into their houses as welcome guests, the
soldiers on their part guarding the people against the depredations of
stragglers and militia.

The grain was ripe for the harvest, and the farmers were short of help;
but the boys laid aside their guns, and swung the cradle and the scythe
with a zest that showed that they worked with a good will. Day after day
the boys of the Seventy-seventh reaped and bound in the fields, while
the good ladies worked day and night to make bread and cakes for the
veterans, who had so long been accustomed to diet on pork and hard tack.
Soft bread, milk, poultry and the staple luxury of Pennsylvania, apple
butter, was a glorious improvement on the usual bill of camp fare, and
kind sympathizing Union people were much better calculated to render our
stay among them agreeable, than the bitter rebels among whom we had so
long been.

The left wing of our extended picket line was under command of Major
Babcock, who, with the line officers of his part of the picket,
established head-quarters at the house of a miller, whose comfortable
rooms and well filled larder afforded substantial inducements to our
friends; but the great attractions at the miller's house were doubtless
the three charming daughters, whose merry faces and bewitching eyes
rejoiced the hearts of our gay major and his associates. Word came to
the right of the line that our friends on the left were in the enjoyment
of far more than the usual allowance of pleasure for men on picket, and
thither started the colonel and the doctor, and our friend, Colonel
Connor, of the Seventh Maine, to investigate the matter. Riding through
a lovely region, now rising to the summit of some gentle eminence, from
whence they could look away upon the surrounding country, its rich
fields of grain ready for the harvest, its charming grov