pleasant scenes that had little of delight for us. At Woodstock we were
joined by the conscripts from the 1st District,--altogether an inferior
company from those before with us, who were honest yeomen from the
northern and mountainous towns, while these were many of them
substitutes from the cities.

At Brattleboro we were marched up to the camp; our knapsacks and persons
searched; and any articles of citizen's dress taken from us; and then
shut up in a rough board building under a guard. Here the prospect was
dreary, and I felt some lack of confidence in our Father's arm, though
but two days before I wrote to my dear friend, E.M.H.,--

I go tomorrow where the din
Of war is in the sulphurous air.
I go the Prince of Peace to serve,
His cross of suffering to bear.


Brattleboro, _26th_, _8th_ month, 1863.--Twenty-five or thirty caged
lions roam lazily to and fro through this building hour after hour
through the day. On every side without, sentries pace their slow beat,
bearing loaded muskets. Men are ranging through the grounds or hanging
in synods about the doors of the different buildings, apparently without
a purpose. Aimless is military life, except betimes its aim is deadly.
Idle life blends with violent death-struggles till the man is unmade a
man; and henceforth there is little of manhood about him. Of a man he is
made a soldier, which is a man-destroying machine in two senses,--a
thing for the prosecuting or repelling an invasion like the block of
stone in the fortress or the plate of iron on the side of the Monitor.
They are alike. I have tried in vain to define a difference, and I see