," said Brown,
"and not at all as you talked to us when in the city a few days ago."

"No, probably not," answered the Lieutenant. "Well, the fact is, boys,
that I have been lying to you like--(and here he used a very hard word
not necessary to be recorded.) We have _all_ been lying; but to you, at
least, I mean to make a clean breast of it. I did not suppose you would
come down, and while you kept at a distance I thought we might as well
keep up a good reputation. Now that you are here, you have not half an
eye if you do not know that 'Camp Lyon' is a humbug, and that there is
no discipline or anything else in it that _should_ be here. I am going
to get out of it, if I can with any honor."

"What is the matter?" asked Smith, very much disappointed, and very much
discouraged at the key which the situation of Camp Lyon seemed to offer
to the corresponding situation of many others of the crack recruiting
stations depended upon for filling up the reduced ranks of the army.

"What is the matter? Everything!" said Woodruff, fairly launched out in
an exposure of the abuses of the recruiting service, for which he had
not before had a fair and _safe_ opportunity. "Half the men are good for
nothing, and almost all the officers worse. We could get along with
worthless _men_, and perhaps make soldiers of them, if we only had
officers worth their salt. Field or line, there is not one in three that
knows when a 'shoulder-arms' is correctly made; and there is no more
attempt at either study or practice than there would be if we were a
hunting party encamped in the Northern woods. Commissions have been
issued to anybody supposed to possess some political influence; and
subordinate commissions have been promised by the higher officers to any
one who offered to bring in a certain number of rapscallions or pay down
a certain sum of money. Those who are not drunken, are lazy; and the men
know about as much of wholesome discipline as a hog knows of holy-water.
I have tried to do a little better with some of the squads of my own
company; but I think that complaints have been made that I 'overworked'
the men, and I have fallen into decidedly bad odor with the good people
up at the big house yonder."

"And who are _they_?" asked Brown, wofully ignorant of the details of
recruiting in 1862. "And what are they doing up at the 'big house,' as
you call it?"

"Eh? you haven't been in there, have you?" said Woodruff. "Come along
then, and see.