e care, Gentlemen
Members of Congress! look to your words and your Acts honestly and
wisely in future! don't palter with Liberty again! it is not well that
soldiers should get into the habit of thinking they are always to
unravel the snarls and cut the knots twisted and tied by clumsy or
crafty fingers. The traitor States already need the _main de fer_,--yes,
and without the _gant de velours_. Let us beware, and keep ourselves
worthy of the boon of self-government, man by man! I do not wish to
hear, "Order arms!" and "Charge bayonets!" in the Capitol. But this
present defence of Free Speech and Free Thought ends, let us hope, that
danger forever.

When we had been ten days in our showy barracks we began to quarrel with
luxury. What had private soldiers to do with the desks of law-givers?
Why should we be allowed to revel longer in the dining-rooms of
Washington hotels, partaking the admirable dainties there?

The May sunshine, the birds and the breezes of May, invited us to
Camp,--the genuine thing, under canvas. Besides, Uncles Sam and Abe
wanted our room for other company. Washington was filling up fast with
uniforms. It seemed as if all the able-bodied men in the country were
moving, on the first of May, with all their property on their backs, to
agreeable, but dusty lodgings on the Potomac.

We also made our May move. One afternoon, my company, the Ninth, and the
Engineers, the Tenth, were detailed to follow Captain Viele, and lay out
a camp on Meridian Hill.

CAMP CAMERON.

As we had the first choice, we got, on the whole, the best site for a
camp. We occupy the villa and farm of Dr. Stone, two miles due north of
Willard's Hotel. I assume that hotel as a peculiarly American point of
departure, and also because it is the hub of Washington,--the centre of
an eccentric, having the White House at the end of its shorter, and the
Capitol at the end of its longer radius,--moral, so they say, as well
as geometrical.

Sundry dignitaries, Presidents and what not, have lived here in times
gone by. Whoever chose the site ought to be kindly remembered for his
good taste. The house stands upon the pretty terrace commanding the
plain of Washington. From the upper windows we can see the Potomac
opening southward like a lake, and between us and the water ambitious
Washington stretching itself along and along, like the shackly files of
an army of recruits.

Oaks love the soil of this terrace. There are some noble ones o