Demoralizing Influences.—While an army always carries with it many demoralizing influences, a man can be a soldier and a gentleman too, but one who is not a gentleman at home, in the army is sure to show the cloven foot. In winter quarters more attention is paid to social features than at any other time. Hostilities to a great extent cease during the winter though sometimes the armies clash.
Religious Worship.—Sometimes while in winter quarters soldiers got together and built rude log houses for places of worship. Protected from the cold in these houses soldiers gathered together usually for regular Sunday preaching and sometimes prayer meetings were held during the week. Perhaps as large a per cent. of soldiers attended preaching as people at home who had more convenient and comfortable places of worship. In summertime soldiers usually assembled in a grove to listen to sermons preached by their chaplain or visiting ministers.
In the Southern army occasionally very much religious interest was manifested and revivals were not unusual. Singing, prayer and sometimes shouting were heard in the camp.
CHAPTER VII.
CHARACTERISTICS OF SOLDIERS.
Difference of Soldiers.—There is as much difference in the make up of the average soldier as in the average citizen at home. It is said that variety is the spice of life and in the army we get variety with a vengeance, and the spice is sometimes a little bit peppery. The home training and habits as well as the natural disposition of the men will show itself in the army, and no amount of diplomacy can relegate these acquired or inherent qualities to the back ground. It is not everyone that can join heartily in a course of life that is distasteful, and one who does will be very apt to adopt the requirements of the new life to the exclusion of long established habits and customs, and will sometimes overdo himself in exercising uncalled for and unnecessary stunts.
The life of a soldier in a strenuous channel does run.
And the life is by no means a pleasant one;
The attractions that lure young men to the field
Are very seductive and to them many yield.
When they don the uniform and fall in line