_October 5th._--For the last two weeks nothing has transpired worthy of note. The time drags heavily when waiting for orders.--Col. Lane’s regiment has moved up to Palo Alto, seven miles from Matamoros. General Lane still drills our regiment, as our colonels are both sick, and one gone home. Yesterday I wrote a letter, and will copy it in part. “* * * * * It is Sunday evening, and just about the time you are returning from church in the afternoon. I fancy I can see the friends convened in your front room. I often think of your parlor. At this time what a different scene our camp presents from that of the drawing-room! Instead of handling gloves, fans, or parasols, our boys are engaged in brightening their arms and equipments, to surprise the regiment this evening on dress parade. I am sitting in tent No. 1, and writing this epistle upon a box that some of the boys have picked up at the commissary’s. While speaking of the mess I will pronounce a short eulogium. It is the only one, with perhaps one exception, that has undergone no changes since we left home. We have had no difficulties, but have lived together in uninterrupted harmony. We now number six, one of our mess having been discharged. What a place this for the study of human nature! Points of character that at home lie concealed from every one, are here developing every day, and consequently much change of opinion in relation to character. Even one’s own self changes views respecting one’s self, in regard to the natural disposition, motives, and impulses of action. The more I see of a soldier’s life, the stronger is my conviction that there are worse evils to be feared than those of the battle field. A retrograde in morals or a total loss of moral principle, is incalculably worse. Take young men, who, from their position in society at home, are excluded from the haunts of strong temptations and the greater vices, and for the most part you will find them moral from habit, rather than fixed principles, and a clear discrimination between right and wrong. O! how many such will be wrecked and ruined in this campaign!