r in the Two Hundredth, one Lieutenant Woodruff, had several times
invited them to "run down to camp and see him before he went away,"
promising to do the honors of the encampment in the best manner
compatible with the duties of a "fellow busy all the time, you know."

Alighting from the vehicle, Smith and Brown found the camp stretching
before them, scarcely so picturesque as they had anticipated, but with
enough of the military air about its green sod and conical tents, to
make it rather varied and pleasing to a couple of "cits" who had not
looked upon the extended army pageant around Washington, or seen
anything more of war than could be observed in a turn-out of the First
Division on the Fourth of July. On a broad level, stretching back for a
quarter of a mile from the railroad-track, and terminating in a strip of
noble oak woods, the tents of the encampment were pitched, forty or
fifty in number, not too white and cleanly-looking, even at a distance,
and decidedly dingy and yellow when brought to a nearer view. Some
attempt had been made at forming them into lines, with regular alleys
between; the hospital-tent at some distance in the rear, distinguished
by a yellow flag hanging listlessly from a pole in front; and the
Colonel's large round tent or marquee prominent in the centre, a small
American flag before it, doing its best to wave in the slight sea air
that came in over the Long Island hills. Groups of soldiers, variously
disposed, dotted the space between the tents or sat at the doors,
chatting with male or female civilians, or their own wives and
daughters, who had run down to see them as an amusement for Sunday
afternoon; while sentinels paced backward and forward along certain
lines and offered an uncertain amount of inconvenience to those who
wished to traverse the camp-grounds in one direction or another.

Smith and Brown, looking for Woodruff and finding it a matter of some
difficulty to discover him, paced up and down among the tents, wherever
the sentinels permitted, looking in at the doors of those canvas
cottages and observing the humors which denoted that the occupants had
been the possessors of plenty of time for other purposes than drill,
however proficient they might have become in that military necessity.
Scarcely one of the alleys between the rows of tents but had its
street-name, stuck up on a piece of chalked or charcoaled board at the
entrance--from the ambitious "Broadway" to the aristocra