carefully covered) would most of them be the better, if the figures were bayoneted and the backgrounds sabred out. Both — pictures and decorations — belong to that bygone epoch of our country when men shaved the moustache, dressed like parsons, said “Sir,” and chewed tobacco, — a transition epoch, now become an historic blank.
The home-correspondence of our legion of young heroes was illimitable. Every one had his little tale of active service to relate. A decimation of the regiment, more or less, had profited by the tender moment of departure to pop the question and to receive the dulcet “Yes.” These lucky fellows were of course writing to Dulcinea regularly, three meals of love a day. Mr. Van Wyck, M. C, and a brace of colleagues, were kept hard at work all day giving franks and saving three-pennies to the ardent scribes. Uncle Sam lost certainly three thousand cents a day in this manner.
What crypts and dens, caves and cellars, there are under that great structure! And barrels of flour in every one of them this month of May, 1861. Do civilians eat in this proportion? Or does long standing in the “Position of a Soldier” (vide “Tactics” for a view of that graceful pose) increase a man’s capacity for bread and beef so enormously?
It was infinitely picturesque in these dim vaults by night. Sentries were posted at every turn. Their guns gleamed in the gaslight. Sleepers were lying in their blankets wherever the stones were
