"Dreadful boy! Why will he make me all this trouble? I can not let my boy go!"
But at last, and somehow, mother gets off. The sewing-machine is going most of the night, and my thoughts are as busy as it is, until far into the morning, with all that is before me that I have never seen, and all that is behind me that I may never see again.
Let me pass over the trying good by the next morning, for Joe is ready with the carriage to take father and me to the station, and we are soon on the cars, steaming away toward the great camp, whither the company already has gone.
"See, Harry, there is your camp!" And looking out of the car-window, across the river, I catch, through the tall tree tops, as we rush along, glimpses of my first camp,—acres and acres of canvas, stretching away into the dim and dusty distance, occupied, as I shall soon find, by some ten or twenty thousand soldiers, coming and going continually, marching and countermarching, until they have ground the soil into the driest and deepest dust I ever saw.
I shall never forget my first impressions of camp life as father and I passed the sentry at the gate. They were anything but pleasant; and I could not but agree with the remark of my father, that "the life of a soldier must be a hard life indeed." For as we entered that great camp, I looked into an A tent, the front flap of which was thrown back, and saw enough to make me sick of the housekeeping of a soldier. There was nothing in that tent but dirt and disorder, pans and kettles, tin cups and cracker-boxes, forks and bayonet-scabbards, greasy pork and broken hard-tack in utter confusion, and over all and everywhere that insufferable dust. Afterward, when we got into the field, our camps in summer-time were models of cleanliness, and in winter models of comfort, as far, at least, as axe and broom could make them so; but this, the first camp I ever saw, was so abominable, that I have often wondered it did not frighten the fever out of me.
But once among the men of the company, all this was soon forgotten. We had supper,—hard-tack and soft bread, boiled pork and strong coffee (in tin cups),—fare that father thought "one could live on right well, I guess;" and then the boys came around and begged father to let me go; "they would take care of Harry; never you fear for that;" and so helped on my cause, that that night, about eleven o'clock, when we were in the railroad station together, on the way home, father said,—
"Now, Harry, my boy, you are not enlisted yet. I am going home on this train; you can go home with me now, or go with the boys. Which will you do?"
To which the answer came quickly enough,—too quickly and too eagerly, I have often since thought, for a father's heart to bear it well,—
"Papa, I'll go with the boys!"
"Well, then, good by, my boy! And may God bless you and bring you safely back to me again!"