will not fight well unless it is well fed and well cared for. To assist him, the quartermaster has his necessary clerks, for he carries on a large business, with Uncle Sam as his principal, and he must account to him for every pound of coffee, bacon, flour, and hay, barrel of vinegar, keg of nails, tent or tent pin that he receives, and finally return them, or tell him satisfactorily where they have gone, and produce his vouchers; or he and his bondsmen must pay their value. All this is done by system and rule: there are mounted wagonmasters to look out for every small string of wagons, and some sort of discipline prevails among these non-enlisted men. A great army must be a moving city, capable of subsisting itself in the uncultivated and desert regions through which it often passes. Every cavalry soldier carries his spare horseshoes and nails; and every cavalry regiment and every battery of artillery has its own forge, tools, and materials for shoeing its horses and making repairs: even the quartermaster's train must have its blacksmiths and their supplies. In travelling down the Rhone during the Crimean war, I was vainly trying to make out the meaning of the letters on the military button of an officer sitting before me; when one of his companions, who happened to be at my side, a well-educated, intelligent man, good-naturedly informed me that they indicated that the wearer belonged to the bureau of the post. He and several others on the boat had been educated for this branch of the service at a military school in Paris, and were en route for the sole purpose of taking charge of this department. We have not arrived at this perfection; for ours, after all, in many respects, is an army of volunteers; but still a messenger had to go every day to Washington for the letters of the army corps, and the telegraph and its wires travel with the camp. The officers' servants alone, in an army of a hundred and fifty thousand men, number more than the thirty-nine hundred soldiers the city of Boston has to raise for her proportion of the levy of nine-months men. The number of servants and horses of an officer depends upon his rank; he draws subsistence for the number allowed to him. A mere cavalry captain can draw for and usually has two horses. His horses and trappings, his mess, must be cared for by others; and hence the thousands of servants that must go with the thousands of officers.