we four walked about town for a time, when Sing. left us promising to come out to camp in the afternoon.
Returning we stopped in a confectionery and bought three small pies which we were devouring as we walked along the street, when we overheard some benevolent old lady in spectacles who eyed us attentively remark: “Poor fellows! how they enjoy them.” The idea of applying the epithet to a set of fellows who were only two days from home, as if they were suffering from starvation, seemed rather comical. However, the old lady displayed a sympathising heart. A little fellow sang out in the popular slang “How are you pies?” By night the camp ground was nearly filled up with tents and the room for drill was necessarily curtailed. During the night it rained and we were consequently somewhat chilly. Another great difficulty in the way of sleep was that our tent was only a few yards from the Pennsylvania Railroad and on account of the extraordinary amount of business, trains were running upon it continually day and night. As they approached the camp the engineer commenced to blow his whistle, and the shriek could be heard at a distance first, then rapidly coming nearer and growing fiercer until opposite the tent, when the sound had accumulated to such a pitch, it seemed like the unearthly yells of some foul fiend, or the dying shrieks and groans of some deep chested Titan giving vent to intense agony. Lloyd would jump straight up from his blanket with “Damn, I thought it was the Devil.”
(Saturday, June 20th.) We arose as usual at day-break, and as there was some difficulty in getting the men to go for water Lloyd and myself volunteered and filled the kettles at the farm house. After some battalion drill in which I, as a sergeant, cut a very awkward figure, finding it almost impossible to keep
