GOING TO THE FRONT.

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would willingly have resigned them after carrying them for a few hours.The musket, after an hour’s drill, seemed heavier and less ornamentalthan it had looked to be. The first day I went out to drill, getting tired ofdoing the same things over and over, I said to the drill-sergeant: “ Let’s stopthis fooling and go over to the grocery.” His only reply was addressed to acorporal: “ Corporal, take this man out and drill him like h—1 ”; and the cor-poral did ! I found that suggestions were not so well appreciated in the armyas in private life, and that no wisdom was equal to a drill-master’s “ Rightface,” “Left wheel,” and “Right, oblique, march.” It takes a raw recruitsome time to learn that he is not to think or suggest, but obey. Somenever do learn. I acquired it at last, in humility and mud, but it was tough.Yet I doubt if my patriotism, during my first three weeks’ drill, was quiteknee-high. Drilling looks easy to a spectator, but it isn’t. Old soldiers whoread this will remember their green recruithood and smile assent. After atime I had cut down my uniform so that I could see out of it, and had con-quered the drill sufficiently to see through it. Then the word came: Onto Washington!

Our company was quartered at a large hotel near the railway station inthe town in which it had been recruited. Bunks had been fitted up within apart of the hotel but little used. We tookour meals at the public table, and foundfault with the style. Six months later wewould have considered ourselves ai’isto-cratic to have slept in the hotel stableswith the meal-bin for a dining-table. Onemorning there was great excitement at thereport that we were going to be sent tothe front. Most of us obtained a limitedpass and went to see our friends for thelast time, returning the same night.

Many of our schoolmates came in tearsto say good-bye. We took leave ofthem all with heavy hearts, for, lightlyas I may here seem to treat the sub-ject, it was no light thing for a boyof twenty to start out for three yearsinto the unknown dangers of a civil war.

Our mothers — God bless them! — hadbrought us something good to eat,—pies,cakes, doughnuts, and jellies. It wasone way in which a mother’s heartfound utterance. The young ladies(sisters, of course) brought an invention, usually made of leather or cloth,containing needles, pins, thread, buttons, and scissors, so that nearly everyrecruit had an embryo tailor’s shop, with the goose outside. One old lady,in the innocence of her heart, brought her son an umbrella. We did not see

A MOTHER’S PARTING GIFT.

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Miap