I arrived home a few minutes after the old Seth Thomas clock struck twelve, August 19th, and on the following 2d day of September I enlisted in what was known in its organization as Company E, Twelfth Kansas Infantry, Charles W. Adams Colonel, son-in-law to Senator James H. Lane. On the following 24th day of December I was 17 years old. I enlisted at Lawrence, was sworn into the service by James Steele of Emporia, who was my first captain. One of the conditions of oath was that I would accept such bounty, pay, rations and clothing as were or would be by law provided for volunteers. Yet in 1864 I had to skirmish around pretty lively and provide the ration part myself. After being sworn in I was sent into a room adjoining and put on my first uniform. There was a near-sighted, cross-eyed fellow in this room who had charge of affairs. There was a long table piled with clothing. It was the worst lot of shoddy that ever came from a factory. At this time I was small, even for my age. I had to take a pair of pants that were many sizes too large. Then we hunted over the pile of pea-jackets and got the smallest one, and it was just too much of a fit. Then my hat! Oh, such a hat! It was black, high crown, about a four-inch rim, a green cord around it, a brass bugle on the front, and it had a large fluffy black feather plume from the band up and angling over the crown. That day I had a daguerreotype picture of myself taken, and when the artist showed it to me I felt so big that President Lincoln's overcoat would not have made me a pair of mittens. Shoes came next, and I got a fit. Then came a knapsack and haversack. The knapsack I loaded up with two suits of underclothes and a fatigue blouse. Then came a pair of dog-hair blankets; and when I strapped the whole outfit on my back I must have looked like Atlas carrying the world. I now started for home on a three days' leave of absence. That evening I boldly walked into the kitchen where my mother was preparing the evening meal. At sight of me she threw up both of her hands, exclaiming "Great Cæsar!" I said, "No mother, I am neither Cæsar nor Brutus, but I am a Union soldier." One could have taken two seamless grain sacks, cut the bottom out and run a gee-string through and made equally as good-fitting a pair of pants as I had on. On returning to Lawrence I found the recruiting camp up the river a little way from town. It was near the Kansas river and close by a big spring that I remembered of being at many times during the summer of 1857. After staying at this camp a few days we marched south to a block-house on the Osage river, twelve miles north of Fort Scott, Kansas. This block-house was called at the time Fort Lincoln. From there we marched back to Paola, where my regiment was mustered into the service; and a few days afterward the wounded from the Prairie Grove battle passed through Paola to the Leavenworth hospital.