Charles Homans’s private carriage was, however, ready to pick up tired men, hot men, thirsty men, men with corns, or men with blisters.  They tumbled into the train in considerable numbers.

An enemy that dared could have made a moderate bag of stragglers at this time.  But they would not have been allowed to straggle, if any enemy had been about.  By this time we were convinced that no attack was to be expected in this part of the way.

The main body of the regiment, under Major Shaler, a tall, soldierly fellow, with a moustache of the fighting-color, tramped on their own pins to the watering-place, eight miles or so from Annapolis.  There troops and train came to a halt, with the news that a bridge over a country road was broken a mile farther on.

It had been distinctly insisted upon, in the usual Southern style, that we were not to be allowed to pass through Maryland, and that we were to be “welcomed to hospitable graves.”  The broken bridge was a capital spot for a skirmish.  Why not look for it here?

We looked; but got nothing.  The rascals could skulk about by night, tear up rails, and hide them where they might be found by a man with half an eye, or half-destroy a bridge; but there was no shoot in them.  They have not faith enough in their cause to risk their lives for it, even behind a tree or from one of these thickets, choice spots for ambush.

So we had no battle there, but a battle of the elements.  The volcanic heat of the morning was followed by a furious storm of wind and a smart shower.  The regiment wrapped themselves in their blankets and took their wetting with more or less satisfaction.  They were receiving samples of all the different little miseries of a campaign.

And here let me say a word to my fellow-volunteers, actual and prospective, in all the armies of all the States:—­

  A soldier needs, besides his soldierly
  drill,

  I. Good FEET.

  II.  A good Stomach.

  III.  And after these, come the good
  Head and the good Heart.

But Good Feet are distinctly the first thing.  Without them you cannot get to your duty.  If a comrade, or a horse, or a locomotive, takes you on its back to the field, you are useless there.  And when the field is lost, you cannot retire, run away, and save your bacon.

Good shoes and plenty of walking make good feet.  A man who pretends to belong to an infantry company ought always to keep himself in training, so that any moment he can march twenty or thirty miles without feeling a pang or raising a blister.  Was this the case with even a decimation of the army who rushed to defend Washington?  Were you so trained, my comrades of the Seventh?

A captain of a company, who will let his men march with such shoes as I have seen on the feet of some poor fellows in this war, ought to be garroted with shoestrings, or at least compelled to play Pope and wash the feet of the whole army of the Apostles of Liberty.