objurgating gentlemen;
but a chronicler has privileges, and I got leave to count myself into
the Eighth Company, my old friend Captain Shumway's. We were to move,
about midnight, in light marching order, with one day's rations.

It has been always full moon at our camp. This night was full moon at
its fullest,--a night more perfect than all perfection, mild, dewy,
refulgent. At one o'clock the drum beat; we fell into ranks, and marched
quietly off through the shadowy trees of the lane, into the highway.

ACROSS THE LONG BRIDGE.

I have heretofore been proud of my individuality, and resisted, so
far as one may, all the world's attempts to merge me in the mass.
_In pluribus unum_ has been my motto. But whenever I march with the
regiment, my pride is that I lose my individuality, that I am merged,
that I become a part of a machine, a mere walking gentleman, a No. 1
or a No. 2, front rank or rear rank, file-leader or file-closer. The
machine is so steady and so mighty, it moves with such musical cadence
and such brilliant show, that I enjoy it entirely as the _unum_ and lose
myself gladly as a _pluribus_.

Night increases this fascination. The outer world is vague in the
moonlight. Objects out of our ranks are lost. I see only glimmering
steel and glittering buttons and the light-stepping forms of my
comrades. Our array and our step connect us. We move as one man. A
man made up of a thousand members and each member a man is a grand
creature,--particularly when you consider that he is self-made. And the
object of this self-made giant, men-man, is to destroy another like
himself, or the separate pigmy members of another such giant. We have
failed to put ourselves--heads, arms, legs, and wills--together as a
unit for any purpose so thoroughly as to snuff out a similar unit. Up to
1861, it seems that the business of war compacts men best.

Well, the Seventh, a compact projectile, was now flinging itself along
the road to Washington. Just a month ago, "in such a night as this,"
we made our first promenade through the enemy's country. The moon of
Annapolis,--why should we not have our ominous moon, as those other
fellows had their sun of Austerlitz?--the moon of Annapolis shone over
us. No epithets are too fine or too complimentary for such a luminary,
and there was no dust under her rays.

So we pegged along to Washington and across Washington,--which at that
point consists of Willard's Hotel, few other buildings being