"That's played out, isn't it, Bill," chimed in another; and to Bill's disgust, as he continued, "It don't go with the little Dutch Doctor since Sharpsburg. Every time his Company's turn would come for picket, while we were at that Camp, Bill would be a front-rank man at the Hospital, with a face as long as a rail, and twisted as if he had just had all his back teeth pulled. The little Dutchman would yell out whenever he would see him—'What for you come? Eh? You tam shneak. Rheumatism, eh? In hip?' And the Doctor would punch his shoulder and hip, and pinch his arms and legs until Bill would squirm like an eel under a gig. 'Here, Shteward,' said the Doctor the last time, as he scribbled a few words on a small piece of paper, 'Take this; make application under left ear, and see if dis tam rheumatism come not out.' Bill followed the Steward, and in a few minutes came back to quarters ornamented with a fly-blister as big as a dollar under his left ear. Next morning Bill didn't report, but he's been going it since on diarrhœa."
"He wasn't smart, there," observed another. "He ought to have done as little Burky of our mess did. He'd hurry to quarters, take the blister off, clap it on again next morning when he'd report, and he'd have the little Dutchman swearing at the blister for not being 'wors a tam.'"
Bill took the sallies of the crowd with the quiet remark that their turn for the sick list would come some day.
The Review on that day was a grand affair. The fine-looking manly form of Old Joe, as, in spite of a
bandaged left ancle not yet recovered from the wound at Antietam, and that kept the foot out of the stirrup, he rode down the line at a gait that tested the horsemanship of his followers, was the admiration of the men. In his honest and independent looking countenance they read, or thought they could, character too purely republican to allow of invidious distinctions between men, who, in their country's hour of need, had left civil pursuits at heavy sacrifices, and those who served simply because the service was to them the business of life. With hearts that kept lively beat with the regimental music as they marched past their new Commander, they rejoiced at this mark of attention to the necessities of the country, which removed an Officer, notorious as a leader of reserves, and placed them under the care of a man high on the list of fighting Generals. "Waterloo," says the historic or rather philosophic novelist of France, "was a change of front of the universe." The results of that contest are matter of record, and justify the remark. At Warrenton a great Republic changed front, and henceforth the milk and water policy of conciliating "our Southern Brethren" ranked as they are behind bristling bayonets, or of intimidating them by a mere show of force, must give way to active campaigning and heavy blows.
A rainy, misty morning a day or two after the review, saw the Corps pass through Warrenton, en route for the Railroad Junction, commencing the change of direction by the left flank, ordered by the new Commander of the Army. The halt for the night was made in a low piece of woodland lying south of the railroad. In column of Regiments the Division encamped, and in a space of time incredible to those not familiar with such scenes, knapsacks were
unslung and the smoke of a thousand camp-fires slowly struggled upwards through the falling rain. Its pelting was not needed to lull the soldiers, weary from the wet march and slippery roads, to slumber.
At early dawn they left the Junction and its busy scenes—its lengthy freight-trains, and almost acres of baggage-wagons, to the rear, and struck the route assigned the Grand Division, of which they were part, for Fredericksburg. "A change of base" our friends will read in the leaded headings of the dailies, and pass it by as if it were a transfer of an article of furniture from one side of the room to the other. Little know they how much individual suffering from heavy knapsacks and blistered feet, confusion of wagon-trains, wrangling and swearing of teamsters, and vexation in almost infinite variety, are comprised in these few words. It is the army that moves, however, and the host of perplexities move with it, all unknown to the great public, and transient with the actors themselves as bubbles made by falling rain upon the lake. The delays incident to a wagon-train are legion. Occurring among the foremost wagons, they increase so rapidly that notwithstanding proper precaution and slowness in front, a rear-guard will often be kept running. The profanity produced by a single chuck hole in a narrow road appears to increase in arithmetical proportion as the wagons successively approach, and teamsters in the rear find their ingenuity taxed to preserve their reputation for the vice with their fellows.
Why negroes are not more generally employed as teamsters is a mystery. They are proverbially patient and enduring. Both the interests of humanity and horseflesh would be best subserved by such employment, and the ranks would not be reduced by the constant and heavy details of able-bodied men for that
duty. Capital and careful horsemen are to be found among the contrabands of Virginia, and many a poor beast, bad in harness because badly treated, would rejoice at the change.