In spite of all these discouragements, however, the daily drills and instruction went on with some approach to regularity, and our raw volunteers began to look more like soldiers. Captain Gordon Granger of the regular army came to muster the re-enlisted regiments into the three years' service, and as he stood at the right of the Fourth Ohio, looking down the line of a thousand stalwart men, all in their Garibaldi shirts (for we had not yet received our uniforms), he turned to me and exclaimed: "My God! that such men should be food for powder!" It certainly was a display of manliness and intelligence such as had hardly ever been seen in the ranks of an army. There were in camp at that time three if not four companies, in different regiments, that were wholly made up of undergraduates of colleges who had enlisted together, their officers being their tutors and professors; and where there was not so striking evidence as this of the enlistment of the best of our youth, every company could still show that it was largely recruited from the best-nurtured and most promising young men of the community. Granger had been in the Southwest when the secession movement began, had seen the formation of military companies everywhere, and the incessant drilling which had been going on all winter, whilst we, in a strange condition of political paralysis, had been doing nothing. His information was eagerly sought by us all, and he lost no opportunity of impressing upon us the fact that the South was nearly six months ahead of us in organization and preparation. He did not conceal his belief that we were likely to find the war a much longer and more serious piece of business than was commonly expected, and that unless we pushed hard our drilling and instruction we should find ourselves at a disadvantage in our earlier encounters. What he said had a good effect in making officers and men take more willingly to the laborious routine of the parade ground and the regimental school; for such opinions as his soon ran through the camp, and they were commented upon by the enlisted men quite as earnestly as among the officers. Still, hope kept the upper hand, and if the question had been put to vote, I believe that three-fourths of us still cherished the belief that a single campaign would end the war.