We did not get off at once.  Red tape delayed us, and we growled savagely.  But we had plenty to eat, and a river beside us.  So, bathing and eating, we passed Thursday in sight of the train.  At length red tape was untied, and Thursday night the 8th and 71st set off, in cattle cars.  This time the advance was a privilege.  In Baltimore we were beset by women trying to sell cakes, and boys trying to beg cartridges.  Along the road we ate, smoked, and slept.  In Philadelphia we had ‘supper’ in the ‘United States Volunteers’ Refreshment Saloon.’  I remember a bright girl there, who got me a second cup of coffee.

And so, Saturday morning, the 18th, we took the boat at Amboy, within two hours of home!  But there was less hilarity than usual on the return of a regiment.  Our news from the city was not the latest, and our grimmest work might be to come—­and in New York!  Woe to any show of a mob we had met!  The indignation was deep and intense.

But in two minutes after we landed on the Battery, papers were circulated through the ranks, and we knew all was quiet.

So up Broadway.  We were too early in the street to gather much of a crowd.  Those who were out hailed us heartily, and at the corner of Grand street or thereabouts an ardent individual from a fourth-story window, plying two boards cymbal-wise (clap-boards, say), initiated a respectable noise.  And so round the corner and into the armory at Centre Market.  The campaign was over, and a few days after we were paid off and mustered out.

As I said, I went to see what it was like, and I saw.  It is a strange life, but a wholesome one, if you get a tolerable sufficiency to eat, and not too heavy a dose of marching.  So severe a time as we had is terribly physical, and benumbs the brain somewhat.  The campaign was short, but the utmost was crowded into those thirty days.

The first portion was advance work, always arduous.  General Knipe’s work was to check the rebel advance.  He did so by going to the front and meeting them, and then retreating slowly before them, making a stand and demonstration of fight, at which their advance would fall back on the main body, at whose approach he would up stakes, run a few miles, and make another show.  Thus he gained ten days’ time, which enabled General Couch, in command of the department, to fortify, and collect and organize troops, and probably saved Harrisburg.  And for the manner in which he did it, without, too, the loss of a man, he deserves credit.

On the whole, did I like it?  Well, I am glad I have been.  But the exact answer to that question is a sentence of Winthrop’s, in his paper ‘Washington as a Camp’:  ’It is monotonous, it is not monotonous, it is laborious, it is lazy, it is a bore, it is a lark, it is half war, half peace, and totally attractive, and not to be dispensed with from one’s experience in the nineteenth century.’

REASON, RHYME, AND RHYTHM.