| "Perhaps He will admit my plea, |
| Perhaps will hear my prayer; |
| But if I perish I will pray, |
| And perish only there. |
| I can but perish if I go. |
| I am resolved to try. |
| For if I stay away I know |
| I must forever die." |
While these old hymns are sounding in our ears, we are almost tempted to go, even if we do perish. Surely nothing has such power to make us forget earth and its round of troubles as these sweet old church songs, familiar from earliest childhood, and wrought into the most tender memories, until we come to regard them as a sort of sacred stream, on which some day our souls will float away happily to the better country.
12. The parson is in my tent doing his best to extract something solemn out of Willis' violin. Now he stumbles on a strain of "Sweet Home," then a scratch of "Lang Syne;" but the latter soon breaks its neck over "Old Hundred," and all three tunes finally mix up and merge into "I would not live alway, I ask not to stay," which, for the purpose of steadying his hand, the parson sings aloud. I look at him and affect surprise that a reverend gentleman should take any pleasure in so vain and wicked an instrument, and express a hope that the business of tanning skins has not utterly demoralized him.
Willis pretends to a taste in music far superior to that of the common "nigger." He plays a very fine thing, and when I ask what it is, replies: "Norma, an opera piece." Since the parson's exit he has been executing "Norma" with great spirit, and, so far as I am able to judge, with wonderful skill. I doubt not his thoughts are a thousand miles hence, among brown-skinned wenches, dressed in crimson robes, and decorated with ponderous ear-drops. In fact, "Norma" is good, and goes far to carry one out of the wilderness.
13. It is after tattoo. Parson Strong's prayer-meeting has been dismissed an hour, and the camp is as quiet as if deserted. The day has been a duplicate of yesterday, cold and windy. To-night the moon is sailing through a wilderness of clouds, now breaking out and throwing a mellow light over valley and mountain, then plunging into obscurity, and leaving all in thick darkness.
Major Keifer, Adjutant Mitchell, and Private Jerroloaman have been stretching their legs before my fire-place all the evening. The Adjutant being hopelessly in love, naturally enough gave the conversation a sentimental turn, and our thoughts have been wandering among the rosy years when our hearts throbbed under the gleam of one bright particular star (I mean one each), and our souls alternated between hope and fear, happiness and despair. Three of us, however, have some experience in wedded life, and the gallant Adjutant is reasonably confident that he will obtain further knowledge on the subject if this cruel war ever comes to an end and his sweetheart survives.
14. The paymaster has been busy. The boys are very bitter against the sutler, realizing, for the first time, that "sutler's chips" cost money, and that they have wasted on jimcracks too much of their hard earnings. Conway has taken a solemn Irish oath that the sutler shall never get another cent of him. But these are like the half repentant, but resultless, mutterings of the confirmed drunkard. The "new leaf" proposed to be turned over is never turned.
16. Am told that some of the boys lost in gambling every farthing of their money half an hour after receiving it from the paymaster.
An Indiana soldier threw a bombshell into the fire to-day, and three men were seriously wounded by the explosion.