er pleased with, because, I suppose, his
black eye was a standing joke."

Just then, a sentinel's hail and the reply, "Grand Rounds," "Field
Officer of the day," hurried the Captain off, and the crowd to their
posts.

CHAPTER VIII.

_The Reconnoissance--Shepherdstown--Punch and Patriotism--Private Tom on
West Point and Southern Sympathy--The Little Irish Corporal on John
Mitchel--A Skirmish--Hurried Dismounting of the Dutch Doctor and
Chaplain--Battle of Falling Waters not intended--Story of the Little
Irish Corporal--Patterson's Folly, or Treason._

An old German writer has said that "six months are sufficient to
accustom an individual to any change in life." As he might fairly be
supposed to have penned this for German readers and with the fixed
habits and feelings of a German, if true at all, it ought to hold good
the world over. As we are more particularly interested in camps at
present, we venture the assertion that six weeks will make a soldier
weary of any camp. With our Sharpsburg camp, however, perhaps this
feeling was assisted by the consciousness so frequently manifested in
the conversation of the men that the army should be on the move.

Hundreds of relatives and friends had taken advantage of the proximity
of the camp to a railroad station to pay us a visit, and with them of
course came eatables--not in the army rations--and delicacies of all
kinds prepared by thoughtful heads and willing hands at home. Not
unfrequently the marquees of the officers were occupied by their
families, who, in their enjoyment of the novelties of camp life, the
drills, and dress parades of the regiment, treasured up for home
consumption, brilliant recollections of the sunny side of war. All this,
to say nothing of the scenery, the shade of the wood, that from the
peculiar position of the camp, so gratefully from early noon extended
itself, until at the hour for dress parade the regiment could come to
the usual "parade rest" entirely in the shade. But the roads were good,
the weather favorable, the troops effective, and the inactivity was a
"ghost that would not down" in the sight of men daily making sacrifices
for the speedy suppression of the Rebellion. The matter was constantly
recurring for discussion in the shelter tent as well as in the marquees,
in all its various forms. A great nation playing at war when its capital
was threatened, and its existence endangered. A struggle in which inert
power was upon one sid