ite handkerchiefs and little flags at us,
and looked their sweetest. And didn't we cheer them! Well, I should say
so. We stood up in the wagons, and swung our caps, and just whooped and
hurrahed as long as those girls were in sight. We always treasured this
incident as a bright, precious link in the chain of memory, for it was
the last public manifestation, of this nature, of good-will and
patriotism from girls and women that was given the regiment until we
struck the soil of the State of Indiana, on our return home some months
after the close of the war.

We arrived at Alton about sundown, and at once marched aboard the big
side-wheel steamboat, "City of Alton," which was lying at the wharf
waiting for us, and guards were promptly stationed to prevent the men
leaving the boat. But "some one had blundered," and no rations had been
provided for our supper. We were good and hungry, too, for our dinner,
at least that of Co. D, consisted only of the left-over scraps of
breakfast. But the officers got busy and went up town and bought, with
their own money, something for us to eat. My company was furnished a
barrel of oyster crackers, called in those days "butter crackers," and
our drink was river water.

The novelty and excitement of the last two days had left me nerveless
and tired out, and to tell the truth, I was feeling the first touch of
"home-sickness." So, after supper I went up on the hurricane deck of
the boat, spread my blanket on the floor, and with my knapsack for a
pillow, laid down and soon fell asleep. The boat did not leave Alton
until after dark, and when it pulled out, the scream of the whistle,
the dashing of the paddles, and the throbbing and crash of the engines,
aroused me from my slumber. I sat up and looked around and watched the
lights of Alton as they twinkled and glimmered in the darkness, until
they were lost to sight by a bend in the river. Then I laid down and
went to sleep again, and did not wake until daylight the next morning,
and found that our boat was moored to the wharf at St. Louis. We soon
debarked, and marched out to Benton Barracks, which were clear out of
town and beyond the suburbs. The shape of Benton Barracks, as I now
remember, was a big oblong square. The barracks themselves consisted of
a continuous connected row of low frame buildings, the quarters of each
company being separated from the others by frame partitions, and
provided with two rows of bunks around the sides and end