spirit, and are worth pains and cost to obtain.  With such variety as this, with portable kitchens in the place of the cumbersome camp-kettle per man, with fresh bread, well-cooked meat and vegetables, and well-made coffee, the soldiers will have every chance of health that diet can afford.  Whereas hard and long-kept salt meat, insufficiently soaked and cooked, and hastily broiled meat or fowls, just killed, and swallowed by hungry men unskilled in preparing food, help on diseases of the alimentary system as effectually as that intemperance in melons and cucumbers and unripe grapes and apples which has destroyed more soldiers than all the weapons of all enemies.

So much for the food.  Next in order come the clothing, and care of the person.

The newspapers have a great deal to say, as we have all seen, about the badness of much of the clothing furnished to the Federal troops.  There is no need to denounce the conduct of faithless contractors in such a case; and the glorious zeal of the women, and of all who can help to make up clothing for the army, shows that the volunteers at least will be well clad, if the good-will of society can effect it.  Whatever the form of dress, it is the height of imprudence to use flimsy material for it.

It seems to be everywhere agreed, in a general way, that the soldier’s dress should be of an easy fit, in the first place; light enough for hot weather and noon service, with resources of warmth for cold weather and night duty.  In Europe, the blouse or loose tunic is preferred to every other form of coat, and knickerbockers or gaiters to any form of trousers.  The shoe or boot is the weak point of almost all military forces.  The French are getting over it; and the English are learning from them.  The number of sizes and proportions is, I think, five to one of what it used to be in the early part of the century, so that any soldier can get fitted.  The Duke of Wellington wrote home from the Peninsula in those days,—­“If you don’t send shoes, the army can’t march.”  The enemy marched away to a long distance before the shoes arrived; and when they came, they were all too small.  Such things do not happen now; but it often does happen that hundreds are made footsore, and thrown out of the march, by being ill-shod; and there seems reason to believe that much of the lagging and apparent desertion of stragglers in the marches of the volunteers of the Federal army is owing to the difficulty of keeping up with men who walk at ease.  If the Southern troops are in such want of shoes as is reported, that circumstance alone is almost enough to turn the scale, provided the Northern regiments attain the full use of their feet by being accurately fitted with stout shoes or boots.  During the darkest days in the Crimea, those who had boots which would stick on ceased to take them off.  They slept in them, wet or dry, knowing, that, once off, they could never be got on again.  Such things cannot happen in the Northern States, where the stoppage of the trade in shoes to the South leaves leather, skill, and time for the proper shoeing of the army; but it may not yet be thoroughly understood how far the practical value of every soldier depends on the welfare of his feet, and how many sizes and proportions of shoe are needed for duly fitting a thousand men.