Still our fellows manage to be at home as they are.  Some of our model tents are types of the best style of temporary cottages.  Young housekeepers of limited incomes would do well to visit and take heed.  A whole elysium of household comfort can be had out of a teapot,—­tin; a brace of cups,—­tin; a brace of plates,—­tin; and a frying-pan.

In these days of war everybody can see a camp.  Every one who stays at home has a brother or a son or a lover quartered in one of the myriad tents that have blossomed with the daffodil-season all over our green fields of the North.  I need not, then, describe our encampment in detail,—­its guard-tent in advance,—­its guns in battery,—­its flagstaff,—­its companies quartered in streets with droll and fanciful names,—­its officers’ tents in the rear, at right angles to the lines of company-tents,—­its kitchens, armed with Captain Viele’s capital army cooking-stoves,—­its big marquees, “The White House” and “Fort Pickens,” for the lodging and messing of the new artillery company,—­its barbers’ shops,—­its offices.  The same, more or less well arranged, can be seen in all the rendezvous where the armies are now assembling.  Instead of such description, then, let me give the log of a single day at our camp.

JOURNAL OF A DAY AT CAMP CAMERON, BY PRIVATE W., COMPANY I.

BOOM!

I would rather not believe it; but it is—­yes, it is—­the morning gun, uttering its surly “Hullo!” to sunrise.

Yes,—­and, to confirm my suspicions, here rattle in the drums and pipe in the fifes, wooing us to get up, get up, with music too peremptory to be harmonious.

I rise up sur mon seant and glance about me.  I, Private W., chance, by reason of sundry chances, to be a member of a company recently largely recruited and bestowed all together in a big marquee.  As I lift myself up, I see others lift themselves up on those straw bags we kindly call our mattresses.  The tallest man of the regiment, Sergeant K., is on one side of me.  On the other side I am separated from two of the fattest men of the regiment by Sergeant M., another excellent fellow, prime cook and prime forager.

We are all presently on our pins,—­K. on those lengthy continuations of his, and the two stout gentlemen on their stout supporters.  The deep sleepers are pulled up from those abysses of slumber where they had been choking, gurgling, strangling, death-rattling all night.  There is for a moment a sound of legs rushing into pantaloons and arms plunging into jackets.

Then, as the drums and fifes whine and clatter their last notes, at the flap of our tent appears our orderly, and fierce in the morning sunshine gleams his moustache,—­one month’s growth this blessed day.  “Fall in, for roll-call!” he cries, in a ringing voice.  The orderly can speak sharp, if need be.

We obey.  Not “Walk in!” “March in!” “Stand in!” is the order; but “Fall in!” as sleepy men must.  Then the orderly calls off our hundred.  There are several boyish voices which reply, several comic voices, a few mean voices, and some so earnest and manly and alert that one says to himself, “Those are the men for me, when work is to be done!” I read the character of my comrades every morning in each fellow’s monosyllable “Here!”