A hardtack was addressed and sent without any envelope, bearing this rhymed message:
"I am a hard-tack that none can chew
Except a very brave boy in blue;
No time nor season can alter me,
I've been hard'ning since sixty-three;
Coffee made of clay and rain
Have tried to soften me in vain,
And salt-horse grease has sought to melt
Or touch my heart—it was not felt!"
The most difficult problem in camp, as the situation appears to one concerned in the perpetual welfare of the men as citizen-soldiers, is to provide for their mental needs. Let me make ample provision for them in this respect and I will guarantee a good morality. Much of the time of the soldier in camp is necessarily unemployed—how shall he occupy himself? Idleness is the devil's great opportunity. The men of the Third have generally been accustomed to books, magazines and papers—only one man in the entire regiment could not sign his name and he is now dead. The desire for mental employment is, therefore, strong. If it can be met with good literature—as it must be met by some means—it will be far less likely to go out in unprofitable and perilous ways. We have made a good beginning in the way of ministering to the mental and moral needs of the men, having erected a tent 40 feet square and furnished it with tables and seats, and organ and song books, writing material, and magazines and papers. Its capacity, however, is altogether inadequate; it is not an uncommon thing to see it filled, and as many more sitting on the logs around it. We had a dedicatory service last Sunday morning, at which I spoke of the manifold and liberal uses to which it would be put and led the minds of the attentive audience from the meaning of the ceremony and of the ancient tabernacle in the wilderness to thoughts of the dedication and high uses of the true temple of God, which is man himself. Five enlisted men came forward to enlist under the banner of the cross and dedicate themselves to the cause of Christ.