ur forks; but _a la guerre, comme a la guerre_. Let the scrubs
growl! Lucky fellows, if they suffer no worse hardships than this!

By-and-by, after breakfast, come company-drills, bayonet-practice,
battalion-drills, and the heavy work of the day. Our handsome Colonel,
on a nice black nag, manoeuvres his thousand men of the line-companies
on the parade for two or three hours. Two thousand legs step off
accurately together. Two thousand pipe-clayed cross-belts--whitened with
infinite pains and waste of time, and offering a most inviting mark to
a foe--restrain the beating bosoms of a thousand braves, as they--the
braves, not the belts--go through the most intricate evolutions
unerringly. Watching these battalion movements, Private W., perhaps,
goes off and inscribes in his journal,--"Any clever, prompt man, with a
mechanical turn, an eye for distance, a notion of time, and a voice
of command, can be a tactician. It is pure pedantry to claim that the
manoeuvring of troops is difficult: it is not difficult, if the troops
are quick and steady. But to be a general, with patience and purpose and
initiative,--ah!" thinks Private W., "for that you must have the man of
genius; and already in this war he begins to appear out of Massachusetts
and elsewhere."

Private W. avows without fear that about noon, at Camp Cameron, he takes
a hearty dinner, and with satisfaction. Private W. has had his feasts
in cot and chateau in Old World and New. It is the conviction of said
private that nowhere and no-when has he expected his ration with more
interest, and remembered it with more affection, than here.

In the middle hours of the day it is in order to get a pass to go to
Washington, or to visit some of the camps, which now, in the middle
of May, begin to form a cordon around the city. Some of these I may
criticize before the end of this paper. Our capital seems arranged by
Nature to be protected by fortified camps on the circuit of its hills.
It may be made almost a Verona, if need be. Our brother regiments have
posts nearly as charming as our own in these fair groves and on these
fair slopes on either side of us.

In the afternoon, comes target-practice, skirmishing-drill, more
company- or recruit-drill, and, at half-past five, our evening parade.
Let me not forget tent-inspection, at four, by the officer of the day,
when our band plays deliciously.

At evening parade all Washington appears. A regiment of ladies,
rather indisposed t