fore we were a day
older. A death of this shameful sort had not occurred to us as being
among the possibilities of war. It took the romance all out of the
campaign, and turned our dreams of glory into a repulsive nightmare. As
for doubting that so barbarous an order had been given, not one of us
did that.

The long night wore itself out at last, and then the negro came to us
with the news that the alarm had manifestly been a false one, and that
breakfast would soon be ready. Straightway we were light-hearted again,
and the world was bright, and life as full of hope and promise as
ever--for we were young then. How long ago that was! Twenty-four years.

The mongrel child of philology named the night's refuse Camp
Devastation, and no soul objected. The Masons gave us a Missouri country
breakfast, in Missourian abundance, and we needed it: hot biscuits; hot
'wheat bread' prettily criss-crossed in a lattice pattern on top;
hot corn pone; fried chicken; bacon, coffee, eggs, milk, buttermilk,
etc.;--and the world may be confidently challenged to furnish the equal
to such a breakfast, as it is cooked in the South.

We stayed several days at Mason's; and after all these years the memory
of the dullness, the stillness and lifelessness of that slumberous
farm-house still oppresses my spirit as with a sense of the presence
of death and mourning. There was nothing to do, nothing to think about;
there was no interest in life. The male part of the household were away
in the fields all day, the women were busy and out of our sight; there
was no sound but the plaintive wailing of a spinning-wheel, forever
moaning out from some distant room--the most lonesome sound in nature,
a sound steeped and sodden with homesickness and the emptiness of
life. The family went to bed about dark every night, and as we were not
invited to intrude any new customs, we naturally followed theirs. Those
nights were a hundred years long to youths accustomed to being up till
twelve. We lay awake and miserable till that hour every time, and
grew old and decrepit waiting through the still eternities for the
clock-strikes. This was no place for town boys. So at last it was with
something very like joy that we received news that the enemy were on our
track again. With a new birth of the old warrior spirit, we sprang to
our places in line of battle and fell back on Camp Ralls.

Captain Lyman had taken a hint from Mason's talk, and he now gave
ordered that our ca