mbridge. This
was the first time I saw him in the uniform of a general. He wore a
blue coat with buff facings and buff underdress, a small sword, rich
epaulets, a black cockade in his three-cornered hat, and a blue sash
under his coat. His hair was done up in a queue. He was in boots and
spurs. He received us politely, directing a young officer to go with
us to the powder house. There we saw a large number of barrels.

"'All full of sand,' the officer whispered. 'We keep 'em here to fool
the enemy,'

"Not far from the powder house I overheard this little dialogue between
a captain and a private.

"'Bill, go get a pail o' water,' said the captain.

"'I shan't do it. 'Tain't my turn,' the private answered."

The men and officers were under many kinds of shelter in the big camp.
There were tents and marquees and rude structures built of boards and
roughly hewn timber, and of stone and turf and brick and brush. Some
had doors and windows wrought out of withes knit together in the
fashion of a basket. There were handsome young men whose thighs had
never felt the touch of steel; elderly men in faded, moth-eaten
uniforms and wigs.

In their possession were rifles and muskets of varying size, age and
caliber. Some of them had helped to make the thunders of Naseby and
Marston Moor. There were old sabers which had touched the ground when
the hosts of Cromwell had knelt in prayer.

Certain of the men were swapping clothes. No uniforms had been
provided for this singular assemblage of patriots all eager for
service. Sergeants wore a strip of red on the right shoulder;
corporals a strip of green. Field officers mounted a red cockade;
captains flaunted a like signal in yellow. Generals wore a pink
ribband and aides a green one.

This great body of men which had come to besiege Boston was able to
shoot and dig. That is about all they knew of the art of war.
Training had begun in earnest. The sergeants were working with squads;
Generals Lee and Ward and Green and Putnam and Sullivan with companies
and regiments from daylight to dark.

Jack was particularly interested in Putnam--a short, rugged, fat,
white-haired farmer from Connecticut of bluff manners and nasal twang
and of great animation for one of his years--he was then fifty-seven.
He was often seen flying about the camp on a horse. The young man had
read of the heroic exploits of this veteran of the Indian wars.

Their mission finished, that evenin