A Wayside Well.
came major, was a fine type of the class of men by whom our volunteer army was mainly officered. He was a plain citizen who had been superintendent in a manufactory, and his military knowledge was only such as could be gained in a militia company. He had, however, a strong soldierly instinct, and, better still, his personal character compelled respect. Familiar in manner, with no "airs," yet always dignified and firm; modest, yet, as we found when the test came, unflinchingly brave; with keen natural intelligence, quick to grasp a situation and prompt in action, he proved that good officers are born, not made. His awkwardness on horseback afforded amusement only for a little while. In a few weeks he rode like a cavalryman, and every fresh trial of his quality raised him in our esteem and affection.
The weeding process worked among the men in a different way. The old and weak and physically unfit broke down. Some of them died; a number of them were discharged from the service. At the end of a month we had lost more officers and as many men as a smartly contested battle would have cost us, and instead of being weaker, we were distinctly stronger for it. The law of the survival of the fittest was beginning to work. In another way the weeding process proceeded. Every army requires a great many non-combatants as its servants. There must be wagoners, clerks at headquarters, ambulance drivers, hospital attendants, "detailed men" of many sorts, and each regiment has to furnish its quota of these. When, therefore, an order would come to detail a man, perhaps for ambulance driver, the colonel would send it down to a captain with the hint, "Detail the worst dead beat in your company." Sometimes these non-combatant positions were sought by those who had no stomach for the fight, and thus, in different ways, our thinned ranks became cleaner.
EATING AND SLEEPING ON THE MARCH.
We learned other things by the discipline of the march. We learned to live as soldiers must. Life in a well-ordered camp and camp life in the field are vastly different. The army lived in shelter tents. These were simply pieces of cotton cloth about six feet square, and each man carried one piece on his knapsack. Two or three buttoned together and stretched over such poles or sticks as could be found, or over muskets set in the ground when nothing else could be had, formed our habitation. We literally carried our houses on our backs. We slept on the ground, or, rather, we learned not to sleep on the ground. Pine branches made a luxurious bed, but anything served—dried grass,
