In April last, my country needed my services; I had been playing soldier, and I felt it my duty to respond to the call of the President.  I did respond.  I uncovered my head, raised my right hand, and solemnly swore to obey the President of the United States for three months.  The three months have expired, and I am once more a free American citizen, and for the first time in my life I know what it is to be free.

ACTIVE SERVICE!  That’s what the military men call it.  I have often read of it; I have heard men talk about it; but now I have seen it.  I meet people every day who congratulate me on my safe return, and say, ’I suppose you are going again?’ Perhaps I am.

It was a beautiful day when our company left home, and what a crowd of people assembled to see us off!  What a waving of banners and handkerchiefs; what shouting and cheering; what an endless amount of hand-shaking; how many ‘farewells,’ ‘good-bys,’ and ‘take-care-of-yourselves,’ were spoken; all of this had to be gone through with, and our company run the gauntlet and nobody was hurt.

Going to war is no child’s play, as many seem to suppose.  Once sworn in as a private, you become a tool, a mere thing, to do another’s bidding.  I do not say this to discourage enlistments,—­far from it.  I am only speaking the truth.  ‘Forewarned, forearmed.’  If there is a hard life upon earth, it is that of a common soldier; he may be the bravest man in the army, he may perform an endless amount of daring deeds, but it is seldom that he gains a tangible reward.  He does all the fighting, he performs all the drudgery, he is plundered by the sutler, he lives on pork and hard-bread, but he gets none of the honors of a victory.  As Biglow says,—­

    ‘Lieutenants are the lowest grade that help pick up the coppers.’

I belonged to an artillery company.  I joined this because somebody told me I could ride.  I wish I had that somebody by the throat.  The idea of a man’s riding over the mountains of Western Virginia!  I won’t call it ridiculous, for that’s no name for it.

I will pass over the uninteresting part of the campaign, that of lying in camp, as everybody now-a-days has ample opportunity to judge of camp life, in the cities, and take the reader at once into ‘active service,’ and show the hardships and trials, together with the fun (for soldiers do have their good times) of campaigning.

On the 29th day of May, 1861, we arrived at Parkersburgh, Va.  It was my first visit to the Old Dominion.  We had been taught when youngsters at school to regard Virginia as a sort of Holy Land, ’flowing with milk and honey,’ and the mother of all that is great and noble in the United States, if not in the world.  We were ‘going South.’