Coffee, coffee, coffee the worst ever seen!
After morning mess you may see a variety of scenes characteristic of camp life. You will see a "fatigue" squad lined up before the Sergeant Major's tent to receive orders for duty around headquarters. They will rake the yard and roll up the side-curtains of the tents, clear away some brush, or make some improvement in our sylvan settlement. Here and there in officers' tents you will see the various school assembled—schools for every rank from major of battalion to the non-commissioned officers. And they will study their little blue-backed "Drill Regulations" as diligently as in days gone by they studied their blue-backed spellers.
At 9 o'clock, say, a battalion marches out of camp to take exercise in the field. While it is performing its evolutions you may perhaps see a skirmishing squad break from the edge of the forest somewhere about, and, with a terrifying yell, make a sudden attack upon the enemy. Across that young peach orchard yonder to our south you will see another company advance by repeated short swift runs and sudden stops, falling each time flat upon the ground to fire, thus driving the foe from the field and winning the day against fearful odds. At 11:30, thirsty, perspiring and dust-begrimed, they come hastily into camp, clash their guns down and look for all the world as though they had just come back from the war. They have met the Spaniards in the field and "routed them and scouted them, nor lost a single man."
When distinguished visitors come to our camp our regimental band comes up to do them honor, and they play, as only this band can, to the delight of all who cover the hillslopes of Camp Alger within hearing. "Ben Bolt," "Margery," "The Merry American," "The Stars and Stripes Forever," and other favorites are finely rendered, but most beautiful of all is their hunting song, with its bugle echo and imitation of the chase resounding through the woods:
A hunting we will go,
A hunting we will go,
A hunting we will go,
Tantivy, tantivy, tantivy,
And then the barking of the dogs and noise of the pursuers and the capture of the quarry.
At 6:30 we have dress parade. Our stage manager may not be able to present this effectively. He would require the services of an entire university corps of students as "supes." The three battalions of four companies each, preceded by the band and bugle corps, march, after some field movements, before the mounted staff. This is the most imposing warlike spectacle to be exhibited.