the pit began
to chaff the galleries, and the galleries the pit. We were allowed noise
nearly _ad libitum_. Our riotous tendencies, if they existed, escaped
by the safety-valve of the larynx. We joked, we shouted, we sang, we
mounted the Speaker's desk and made speeches,--always to the point; for
if any but a wit ventured to give tongue, he was coughed down without
ceremony. Let the M.C.s adopt this plan and silence their dunces.

With all our jollity we preserved very tolerable decorum. The regiment
is _assez bien compose_. Many of its privates are distinctly gentlemen
of breeding and character. The tone is mainly good, and the _esprit de
corps_ high. If the Colonel should say, "Up, boys, and at 'em!" I know
that the Seventh would do brilliantly in the field. I speak now of its
behavior in-doors. This certainly did it credit. Our thousand did the
Capitol little harm that a corporal's guard of Biddies with mops and
tubs could not repair in a forenoon's campaign.

Perhaps we should have served our country better by a little Vandalism.
The decorations of the Capitol have a slight flavor of the Southwestern
steamboat saloon. The pictures (now, by the way, carefully covered)
would most of them be the better, if the figures were bayoneted and the
backgrounds sabred out. Both--pictures and decorations--belong to that
bygone epoch of our country when men shaved the moustache, dressed like
parsons, said "Sir," and chewed tobacco,--a transition epoch, now become
an historic blank.

The home-correspondence of our legion of young heroes was illimitable.
Every one had his little tale of active service to relate. A decimation
of the regiment, more or less, had profited by the tender moment of
departure to pop the question and to receive the dulcet "Yes." These
lucky fellows were of course writing to Dulcinea regularly, three meals
of love a day. Mr. Van Wyck, M.C., and a brace of colleagues were kept
hard at work all day giving franks and saving threepennies to the ardent
scribes. Uncle Sam lost certainly three thousand cents a day in this
manner.

What crypts and dens, caves and cellars there are under that great
structure! And barrels of flour in every one of them this month of May,
1861. Do civilians eat in this proportion? Or does long standing in the
"Position of a Soldier" (_vide_ "Tactics" for a view of that graceful
_pose_) increase a man's capacity for bread and beef so enormously?

It was infinitely picturesque in the