As these be tastes and preferences notably absent from the mind of the average young man, our volunteers usually regard their experience in Camp of Instruction as among the most unpleasant of their war memories.
These were the trials that tested Harry Glen's resolution sorely. When he enlisted with the intention of redeeming himself, he naturally expected that the opportunity he desired would be given by a prompt march to the field, and a speedy entrance into an engagement. He nerved himself strenuously for the dreadful ordeal of battle, but this became a continually receding point. The bitter defeat at Bull Run was bearing fruit in months of painstaking preparation before venturing upon another collision.
Day by day he saw the chance of retrieving his reputation apparently more remote. Meanwhile discouragements and annoyances grew continually more plentiful and irksome. He painfully learned that the most disagreeable part of war is not the trial of battle, but the daily sacrifices of personal liberty, tastes, feelings and conveniences involved in camp-life, and in the reduction of one's cherished individuality to the dead-level of a passive, obedient, will-less private soldier.
“I do wish the regiment would get orders to move!” said almost hourly each one of a half-million impatient youths fretting in Camps of Instruction through the long Summer of 1861.
“I do wish the regiment would get orders to move!” said Harry Glen angrily one evening, on coming into the Surgeon's tent to have his blistered hands dressed. He had been on fatigue duty during the day, and the Fatigue-Squad had had an obstinate struggle with an old oak stump, which disfigured the parade-ground, and resisted removal like an Irish tenant.
“I am willing—yes, I can say I am anxious, even—to go into battle,” he continued, while Dr. Paul Denslow laid plasters of simple cerate on the abraded palms, and then swathed them in bandages. “Anything is preferable to this chopping tough stumps with a dull ax, and drilling six hours a day while the thermometer hangs around the nineties.”
“I admit that there are things which would seem pleasanter to a young man of your temperament and previous habits,” said the Surgeon, kindly. “Shift over into that arm-stool, which you will find easier, and rest a little while. Julius, bring in that box of cigars.”
While Julius, who resembled his illustrious namesake as little in celerity of movement as he did in complexion, was coming, the Surgeon prepared a paper, which he presented to Harry, saying:
“There, that'll keep you off duty to-morrow. After that, we'll see what can be done.”
Julius arrived with the cigars as tardily as if he had had to cross a Rubicon in the back room. Two were lighted, and the Surgeon settled himself for a chat.