!)KILLING A KAW KECKUIT.
ing dependent upon Ms comrades. Old soldiers preserve a happy medium. I have seen a new regiment start out with a lot of indescribable material, including sheet-iron stoves, and come back after a long march covered with more mud than baggage, stripped of everything except blankets, haversacks, canteens, muskets, and cartridge-boxes.
During that afternoon in Boston, after marching and countermarching, or, as one of our farmer-boy recruits expressed it, after “hawing and geeing” about the streets, we were sent to Fort Independence for the night for safe-keeping. A company of regulars held the fort, and the guards walked their posts with an uprightness that was astonishing. Our first impression of them was that there was a needless amount of “wheel about and turn about, and walk just so,” and of saluting and presenting arms. We were all marched to our quarters within the fort, where we unslung our knapsacks. After the first day’s struggle with a knapsack, the general verdict was, “ got too much of it.” At supper-time we were marched to the dining-barracks, where our bill of fare was beefsteak, coffee, wheat bread, and potatoes, but not a sign of milk or butter. It struck me as queer when I heard that the army was never provided with butter and milk.
The next day we started for Washington, by rail. We marched through New York’s crowded streets without awakening the enthusiasm we thought our due; for we had read of the exciting scenes attending the departure of the New York 7th for Washington, on the day the 6th Massachusetts was mobbed in Baltimore. ... We arrived in Baltimore late at night, and we marched through its deserted streets unmolested. . . .
PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, WASHINGTON. From a sketch made in 1861.
top was strapped a double woolen blanket and a rubber one. Many other things were left behind because of lack of room in or about the knapsack.
On our arrival in Bost on we were marched through the streets—the first march of any consequence we had taken with our knapsacks and equipments. Our dress consisted of a belt about the body, which held a cartridge-box and bayonet, a cross-belt, also a haversack and tin drinking-cup, a canteen, and, last but not least, the knapsack strapped to the back. The straps ran over, around, and about one, in confusion most perplexing to our unsophisticated shoulders, the knapsack constantly giving the wearer the feeling that he was being pulled over backward. My canteen banged against my bayonet, both tin cup and bayonet badly interfered with the butt of my musket, while my cartridge-box and haversack were constantly flopping up and down — the whole jangling like loose harness and chains on a runaway horse. As we marched into Boston Common, I involuntarily east my eye about for a bench. But for a former experience in offering advice, I should have proposed to the captain to “chip in” and hire a team to carry our equipments. Such was my first experience in war harness. Afterward, with hardened muscles, rendered athletic by long marches and invigorated by hardships, I could look back upon those days and smile, while carrying a knapsack as lightly as my heart. That morning my heart was as heavy as my knapsack. At last the welcome orders came: “ Prepare to open ranks! Bear, open order, march! Bight dress! Front! Order arms! Fix bayonets! Stack arms! Unsling knapsacks! In place, rest! ”
The tendency of raw soldiers at first is to overload themselves. On the first long march the reaction sets in, and the recruit goes to the opposite extreme, not carrying enough, and thereby beeom-
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Jack, was honored with a call from his mother, a little woman, hardly reaching up to his shoulder, with a sweet, motherly, care-worn face. At the last moment, though she had tried hard to preserve her composure, as is the habit of New England people, she threw her arms around her boy’s neck, and with an outburst of sobbing and crying, said: “My dear boy, my dear boy, what will your poor old mother do without you? You are going to fight for your country. Don’t forget your mother, Jack; God bless you, God bless you!” We felt as if the mother’s tears and blessing were a benediction over us all. There was a touch of nature in her homely sorrow and solicitude over her big boy, which drew tears of sympathy from my eyes as I thought of my own sorrowing mother at home. The sympathetic Wad Eider burst into tears and sobs. His eyes refused, as he expressed it, to “ dry up,” until, as we were moving off, Jack’s mother, rushing toward him with a bundle tied like a wheat-sheaf, called out in a most pathetic voice, “ Jack! Jack! you’ve forgotten to take your pennyroyal.” We all laughed, and so did Jack, and I think the laugh helped him more than the cry did. Everybody had said his last word, and the cars were off. Handkerchiefs were waved at us from all the houses we passed; we cheered till we were hoarse, and then settled back and swung our handkerchiefs.
Just here let me name over the contents of my knapsack, as a fair sample of what all the volunteers started with. There were in it a pair of trousers, two pairs of drawers, a pair of thick boots, four pairs of stockings, four flannel shirts, a blouse, a looking-glass, a can of peaches, a bottle of cough-mixture, a button-stick, chalk, razor and strop, the “tailor’s shop” spoken of above, a Bible, a small volume of Shakspere, and writing utensils. To its
A MOTHER’S PARTING GIFT.
a part of the hotel but little used. We took our meals at the public table, and found fault with the style. Six months later we would have considered ourselves aristocratic to have slept in the hotel stables with the meal-bin for a dining-table. One morning there was great excitement at the report that we were going to be sent to the front. Most of us obtained a limited pass and went to see our friends for the last time, returning the same night. Many of our schoolmates came in tears to say good-by. We took leave of them all with heavy hearts, for, lightly as I may here seem to treat the subject, it was no light thing for a boy of twenty to start out for three years into the unknown dangers of a civil war. Our mothers — God bless them! — had brought us something good to eat— pies, cakes, doughnuts, and jellies. It was one way in which a mother’s heart found 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 every recruit 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 anything particularly laughable about it at the time, but our old drill-sergeant did. Finally we were ready to move; our tears were wiped away, our buttons were polished, and our muskets were as bright as emery paper could make them.
“Wad” Eider, a member of our company, had come from a neighboring State to enlist with us. He was about eighteen years of age, red-headed, freckled-faced, good-natured, and rough, with a wonderful aptitude for crying or laughing from sympathy. Another comrade, whom I will call
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