before. Recruits became old
soldiers in a trice. And as to awkward squads, men that would have been
the veriest louts and lubbers in the piping times of peace now learned
to toe the mark, to whisk their eyes right and their eyes left, to drop
the butts of their muskets without crushing their corns, and all the
mysteries of flank and file,--and so became full-fledged heroes before
they knew it.

In the rests between our drills we lay under the young shade on the
sweet young grass, with the odors of snowballs and horse-chestnut blooms
drifting to us with every whiff of breeze, and amused ourselves with
watching the evolutions of our friends of the Massachusetts Eighth, and
other less experienced soldiers, as they appeared upon the field. They,
too, like ourselves, were going through the transformations. These
sturdy fellows were then in a rough enough chrysalis of uniform. That
shed, they would look worthy of themselves.

But the best of the entertainment was within the Capitol. Some three
thousand or more of us were now quartered there. The Massachusetts
Eighth were under the dome. No fear of want of air for them. The
Massachusetts Sixth were eloquent for their State in the Senate Chamber.
It was singularly fitting, among the many coincidences in the history of
this regiment, that they should be there, tacitly avenging the assault
upon Sumner and the attempts to bully the impregnable Wilson.

In the recesses, caves, and crypts of the Capitol what other legions
were bestowed I do not know. I daily lost myself, and sometimes when
out of my reckoning was put on the way by sentries of strange corps, a
Reading Light Infantry man, or some other. We all fraternized. There was
a fine enthusiasm among us: not the soldierly rivalry in discipline that
may grow up in future between men of different States acting together,
but the brotherhood of ardent fellows first in the field and earnest in
the cause.

All our life in the Capitol was most dramatic and sensational.

Before it was fairly light in the dim interior of the Representatives
Chamber, the _reveilles_ of the different regiments came rattling
through the corridors. Every snorer's trumpet suddenly paused. The
impressive sound of the hushed breathing of a thousand sleepers, marking
off the fleet moments of the night, gave way to a most vociferous
uproar. The boy element is large in the Seventh Regiment. Its slang
dictionary is peculiar and unabridged. As soon as we woke,