Your spirit brave, old rock-bound home, shall nerve us in the strife.
Before us gleams the future, with manly parts to play,
While from the dim past stretches the unbroken line of gray.
Oh! the dear old gray battalion, the loyal line of gray,
Friend close to friend, firm to the end, shall stand the line of gray.
CHAPTER V.
THE PLEBE IN BARRACKS.
The next morning we took our bundles, buckets, and brooms to barracks, and upon returning to camp we unfastened the tent cords and held up the canvas by the poles, and, at the tap of the drum at 12 o’clock, every tent was lowered to the ground, and “Camp McPherson” was no more. We then “fell in,” and to the tune of “The Girl I Left Behind Me” marched to barracks, leaving the summer visitors standing under the trees near where the guard tents had been.
There were rooms enough so that every two cadets could have one together. Roommates having been chosen and rooms selected (according to rank, of course,) each cadet went to his own room, and there he found two single iron bedsteads and a double clothes-press. The old cadets got the balance of their effects (such as cadets are permitted to have in their rooms) from the trunk rooms, while the plebes got the articles they had there, and the balance, such as mattresses and tables, they went to the Commissary for, and carried them across the plain. Every one obtained at the Commissary the text-books he needed before Christmas, and by night all rooms were in order. The return to barracks is a great day for plebes, for then they quit carrying palms to the front.