On New Year's eve we had a change of weather which rudely broke in upon our dream of a steady and mild winter. It had been raining nearly all day, and we had just turned in about ten o'clock in the evening when a sudden gale sprung up from the northward. The water-soaked ground did not hold the tent pins very well, and the rattling of canvas warned us to look after the fastenings. The staff were all quickly at work, the servants being, as usual, slow in answering a call in the night. The front of our mess tent blew in, and the roof and sides were bellying out and flapping like a ship's sail half clewed up. I caught the door-flaps and held them down to the pole with all my strength, shouting to the black boys to turn out before the whole should fly away. Then we had a lively time for an hour, going from tent to tent to drive the pins tighter and make things secure. We had just got them snug, as we thought, and began to listen to the roaring of the wind with something like defiance, when a "stick-and-clay" chimney, which Colonel Sterling and my brother had at the back of their tent, took fire and was near setting the whole encampment in a blaze. This made another shout and rush, till the chimney was torn away from the canvas and the fire extinguished. The gale was so fierce that the sparks from the camp-fires rolled along the ground instead of rising, and we should have burned up had not the rain kept the tents soaking wet. It grew cold so fast that by the time we had made the encampment safe, the wet canvas froze stiff. It must be confessed that we did not sleep well that night, and we got up in the morning aching with cold. It still blew a gale, though the sky was clear and the thermometer had fallen to zero. It was a typical cyclone coming as a cold wave from the North, and, as we afterward learned, was exceptional in its suddenness and bitterness along the whole line from Minnesota to northern Georgia. The soldiers in the camps had slept but little, for they were obliged to keep awake and near the fires to escape freezing. No one who has not lived in tents or in bivouac in such a time can understand what real suffering from cold is. Exposure by day is easy to bear compared with the chill by night when camp-fires burn low and men lie shivering, their teeth chattering, while extreme drowsiness makes exertion painful and there is danger of going off into the sleep that knows no waking. On New Year's day morning the ground was frozen solid. All huddled about the fires, but the gale was so fierce that on the windward side there seemed to be no radiation of heat, so completely was the fire blown away from that side of the logs. On the leeward side the smoke suffocated and the sparks burned one, and men passed from one side to the other doubting which was the more tolerable.