I go tomorrow where the din
    Of war is in the sulphurous air. 
    I go the Prince of Peace to serve,
    His cross of suffering to bear.

Brattleboro, 26th, 8th month, 1863.—­Twenty-five or thirty caged lions roam lazily to and fro through this building hour after hour through the day.  On every side without, sentries pace their slow beat, bearing loaded muskets.  Men are ranging through the grounds or hanging in synods about the doors of the different buildings, apparently without a purpose.  Aimless is military life, except betimes its aim is deadly.  Idle life blends with violent death-struggles till the man is unmade a man; and henceforth there is little of manhood about him.  Of a man he is made a soldier, which is a man-destroying machine in two senses,—­a thing for the prosecuting or repelling an invasion like the block of stone in the fortress or the plate of iron on the side of the Monitor.  They are alike.  I have tried in vain to define a difference, and I see only this.  The iron-clad with its gun is the bigger soldier:  the more formidable in attack, the less liable to destruction in a given time; the block the most capable of resistance; both are equally obedient to officers.  Or the more perfect is the soldier, the more nearly he approaches these in this respect.

Three times a day we are marched out to the mess houses for our rations.  In our hands we carry a tin plate, whereon we bring back a piece of bread (sour and tough most likely), and a cup.  Morning and noon a piece of meat, antique betimes, bears company with the bread.  They who wish it receive in their cups two sorts of decoctions:  in the morning burnt bread, or peas perhaps, steeped in water with some saccharine substance added (I dare not affirm it to be sugar).  At night steeped tea extended by some other herbs probably and its pungency and acridity assuaged by the saccharine principle aforementioned.  On this we have so far subsisted and, save some nauseating, comfortably.  As we go out and return, on right and left and in front and rear go bayonets.  Some substitutes heretofore have escaped and we are not to be neglected in our attendants.  Hard beds are healthy, but I query cannot the result be defeated by the degree?  Our mattresses are boards.  Only the slight elasticity of our thin blankets breaks the fall of our flesh and bones thereon.  Oh! now I praise the discipline I have received from uncarpeted floors through warm summer nights of my boyhood.

The building resounds with petty talk; jokes and laughter and swearing.  Something more than that.  Many of the caged lions are engaged with cards, and money changes hands freely.  Some of the caged lions read, and some sleep, and so the weary day goes by.

L.M.M. and I addressed the following letter to Governor Holbrook and hired a corporal to forward it to him.

Brattleboro, Vt., 26th, 8th month, 1863. 
FREDERICK HOLBROOK,
Governor of Vermont:—­