e street," and the day's work
is to be laid out for them. We privates have been studying our maps. For
we expect to march to Altona, where last night the first battalion
camped, and we suspect that they will march out and oppose us. It is only
seven miles by road, but no one knows how long if skirmishing is added.

After mailing my letter last night I sat among others at the captain's
fire, listening to his ready answers to the questions which we fired at
him. We went over points of strategy, and discussed the day's work. It
has become plain to me that there is a great advantage in so small a camp
as ours, a regiment of but six companies. We can be in or pretty close to
every scrap that happens, and all the real military problems are fairly
plain to us. Besides, this hike is to be the longest yet. When further
you consider that a month of Plattsburg has as many hours of service as a
militiaman gets in two years and a half at home, that our continuous
service is naturally much more valuable than the militiaman's weekly
drill in his armory, and finally that we are under West Pointers who each
day explain and discuss the problem, you can see that a man in the Tenth
Regiment has a chance to learn a good deal.

Little absurdities are taking place around me. Says Corder, struggling
with his pack, "Bann, will you help me into my corset." Pickle says to
Reardon (out of David's hearing) "Ten cents for a bum piece of pie that
you have to eat with your hands! That gets my goat." And just now has
come a hoot from every part of the camp when from I company, in line to
start and loading guns for a skirmish, sounded the pop of an accidental
discharge. But the men of I company look sour and glum.

Nevertheless I will admit that I discovered yesterday from personal
experience, but luckily in the rattle and banging of a fight, how the gun
is accidentally discharged. You draw back the bolt and push it forward
again, thus putting a cartridge in the barrel. Then you turn the bolt
down. Now if in so doing your third or fourth finger strays inside the
trigger guard and presses the trigger (and it is very easily done)
then--! But no one could hear my mistake in all the firing.

(_Resting after battle, near Altona._)

We marched for some miles unmolested along our westward road, and the
amateur strategists among us scanned each rise of ground ahead,
predicting fights. But when the row finally began we were t