The route brought them through a land covered with hamlets of camps, drilling squadrons, and the panoply of war.  While the elder lady gave a divided mind to the strange panorama, Merry watched everything eagerly, amused and interested by this spectacle of preparation.  Such soldiers as she could see distinctly looked like farmers in holiday homespun; the cavalry like nondescript companies of backwoods hunters.  There seemed to be no uniformity in infantry equipment or cavalry accoutrements, and the discipline struck her as in keeping with this diversity of dress and ornament.  The men could be seen hurrying in boyish glee toward the train as it drew near the temporary station, where mail-bags were thrown out and sometimes supplies of food or munitions of war.  Jocular remarks were passed between the soldiery at the windows when the wistful groups gathered along the railway line.

“I say, North Cal’ina, you’n’s goin’ straight through to Yankee land?” a man in the throng shouts to some one on the train.

“Straight.”

“Send us a lock o’ Lincoln’s hair to poison blind adders, will you?”

“No—­promised his scalp to my sweetheart to cover the rocking-chair.”

Then, as the laugh that met this sally died away, another humorist piped, out: 

“Tell Uncle Joe Johnston we’re just rustin’ down here for a fight; ef he don’t hurry up we’ll go ahead ourselves.  We’re drilled down so fine now that we can’t think ‘cept by the rule o’ tactics.”

“Jest you never mind, boys.  Uncle Joe’ll do enough thinkin’ fur ye when he gets ready to tackle the Yanks.”

“Hurrah for Uncle Joe!” And as the cheery cry swelled farther and farther, the train drew out, everybody looking from the windows as the patient soldiery straggled back campward.

“Your soldiers seem very gay, Vincent.  One would think that war, the dreadful uncertainty of their movements, absence of friends, and lack of good food would sadden them,” Mrs. Sprague said wistfully at one of the stations when raillery like this had been even more pointed and boisterous.

“A wise commander will do all he can to keep his men gay; if they were not jovial they’d go mad.  Think of it!  Day after day, week after week, who knows but year after year, the wearisome monotony of camp and march!  Where the men are educated, or at least readers, they make better soldiers, because they brood less.  Brooding saps the best fiber of the army.  Your Northern men ought to have an advantage there, for education is more general with you than it is with us.  It is not bravery that makes a man eager for the campaign, it is unrest.  As a rule, the best soldiers in action are those who have a mortal dread of battle.”

“That surprises me.”

“It is true.  I always distrust men that clamor to be led on; they are the first to break when the brush comes.  Jack will tell you that, for we are agreed on it.”

“Jack himself was eager for battle,” Mrs. Sprague said, sighing.