never forget the peculiar plaintive sound of the fifes as they
shrilled out on the damp air. The melody was destined to become very
familiar, but to this day I can't help wondering how it happened
that so melancholy a strain was chosen for the waking tune of the
soldiers' camp. The bugle reveille is quite different; it is even
cheery and inspiriting; but the regulation music for the drums and
fifes is better fitted to waken longings for home and all the sadder
emotions than to stir the host from sleep to the active duties of
the day. I lay for a while listening to it, finding its notes
suggesting many things and becoming a thread to string my reveries
upon, as I thought of the past which was separated from me by a
great gulf, the present with its serious duties, and the future
likely to come to a sudden end in the shock of battle. We roused
ourselves; a dash of cold water put an end to dreaming; we ate a
breakfast from a box of cooked provisions we had brought with us,
and resumed the duty of organizing and instructing the camp. The
depression which had weighed upon me since the news of the opening
guns at Sumter passed away, never to return. The consciousness of
having important work to do, and the absorption in the work itself,
proved the best of all mental tonics. The Rubicon was crossed, and
from this time out, vigorous bodily action, our wild outdoor life,
and the strenuous use of all the faculties, mental and physical, in
meeting the daily exigencies, made up an existence which, in spite
of all its hardships and all its discouragements, still seems a most
exhilarating one as I look back on it across a long vista of years.

The first of May proved, instead, a true April day, of the most
fickle and changeable type. Gusts of rain and wind alternated with
flashes of bright sunshine. The second battalion of the Third
Regiment arrived, and the work of completing the cantonments went