I swarmed in for a little while with our Paymaster, picked a little, spaded a little, shovelled a little, took a hand to my great satisfaction at earth-works, and for my efforts I venture to suggest that Jersey City owes me its freedom in a box, and Jersey State a basket of its finest Clicquot.

Is my gentle reader tired of the short marches and frequent halts of the Seventh?  Remember, gentle reader, that you must be schooled by such alphabetical exercises to spell bigger words—­skirmish, battle, defeat, rout, massacre—­by-and-by.

Well,—­to be Xenophontic,—­from the Race-Course that evening we marched one stadium, one parasang, to a cedar-grove up the road.  In the grove is a spring worthy to be called a fountain, and what I determined by infallible indications to be a lager-bier saloon.  Saloon no more!  War is no respecter of localities.  Be it Arlington House, the seedy palace of a Virginia Don,—­be it the humbler, but seedy, pavilion where the tired Teuton washes the dust of Washington away from his tonsils,—­each must surrender to the bold soldier-boy.  Exit Champagne and its goblet; exit lager and its mug; enter whiskey-and-water in a tin pot.  Such are the horrors of civil war!

And now I must cut short my story, for graver matters press.  As to the residence of the Seventh in the cedar-grove for two days and two nights,—­how they endured the hardship of a bivouac on soft earth and the starvation of coffee sans milk,—­how they digged manfully in the trenches by gangs all these two laborious days,—­with what supreme artistic finish their work was achieved,—­how they chopped off their corns with axes, as they cleared the brushwood from the glacis,—­how they blistered their hands,—­how they chafed that they were not lunging with battailous steel at the breasts of the minions of the oligarchs,—­how Washington, seeing the smoke of burning rubbish, and hearing dropping shots of target-practice, or of novices with the musket shooting each other by accident,—­how Washington, alarmed, imagined a battle, and went into panic accordingly,—­all this, is it not written in the daily papers?

On the evening of the 26th, the Seventh travelled back to Camp Cameron in a smart shower.  Its service was over.  Its month was expired.  The troops ordered to relieve it had arrived.  It had given the other volunteers the benefit of a month’s education at its drills and parades.  It had enriched poor Washington to the tune of fifty thousand dollars.  Ah, Washington! that we, under Providence and after General Butler, saved from the heel of Secession!  Ah, Washington, why did you charge us so much for our milk and butter and strawberries?  The Seventh, then, after a month of delightful duty, was to be mustered out of service, and take new measures, if it would, to have a longer and a larger share in the war.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS.

I took advantage of the day of rest after our return to have a gallop about the outposts.  Arlington Heights had been the spot whence the alarmists threatened us daily with big thunder and bursting bombs.  I was curious to see the region that had had Washington under its thumb.