only three hundred and seventy were around the standards out of the eleven hundred who first took the field. Many had fallen on picket or been cut off singly, more by disease, but alike doing their duty, unmentioned and unnoticed. A larger number were yet suffering from overwork and sickness; and the regiment would in time recruit to seven hundred, from men now disabled, if there should be no more casualties. A few days in camp, in a good-sized tent--none of the two-feet-high shelter affairs--in pleasant summer weather, is, on the whole, something new and exhilarating. The ground, to be sure, is rather hard, particularly when you have no straw; and a soldier's table is not always the most luxurious in the world. Now that we are safe, dry, and warm, at home, we can venture to declare that we were very unfortunate in losing the sensation of going without food, of sleeping in the mud and in the rain--our arms girded on--any moment to be aroused by the whistle of the bullet or the roll of the drum calling us to the deadly strife. To us, however, it was all _couleur de rose_. In the early morn, at break of day, it was not the crow of the cock, or the jarring rattle of the wheels of the city baker or milkman, but the reveille that waked us from our martial dreams. The drum of the infantry, the bugles of the cavalry and artillery would begin; some early riser would rouse up his regiment; then another would take it up; until the call had gone through every corps. The old staid rub-a-dub of the English drummer is giving place to the stirring French rat-a-plan. And there was one band that generally led off in a splendid style. They did beat their drums lively and sharply. Not being obliged to be up with the sun and cook our own breakfast, we generally contrived to get a little more sleep. After breakfast, the bands were playing for guard-mounting; and we sat gazing down into the valley from our tent upon the large army corps encamped below. We were on the western slope of the Blue Ridge, through whose gaps not many days before, a few miles farther north, Franklin had successfully fought his way. Still farther up, Burnside, with Reno and Hooker under him, had at South Mountain driven the enemy in--that battle which came to us so welcome, the first victory after Pope's disasters, and the retreat from the Peninsula. The valley below us was Pleasant Valley. The opposite side to our tent was a short spur of the Blue Ridge; the southern extremity of which is the Maryland Heights, so well known in the history of the surrender of Harper's Ferry. The valley between is fertile and highly cultivated, full of mountain springs and brooks, emptying into one stream of sufficient size to turn the wheels of a large mill; the water is delicious; the prevailing limestone does not reach this valley. In the morning before the army moved there, the little river was clear as crystal; at night it was changed into an