_Second night._ You rush down after an early dinner, in rash anxiety to be drilled. Arriving very red and hot at the armory, you find bales of straw and boxes on the sidewalk in front, and hear dreadful rumors that our armory is to be taken away; that we are to have regular barracks, and live there all the time; that we are to draw rations, and cook them. Dismay is on every face. The melancholy man alone seems not to be jostled from his habitual sad composure: he explains to the inquiring, doubting crowd that the ration consists of 'one and a quarter pounds of fresh beef or three quarters of a pound of salt beef, pork, or bacon, fourteen ounces of flour or twelve ounces of hard bread, with eight pounds of coffee, ten of sugar, ten of rice or eight quarts of beans, four quarts of vinegar, four pounds of soap, one and a quarter pounds candles, and two quarts of salt, to the hundred rations. But you won't get fresh meat often, nor yet flour, and I reckon you'll have to take beans instead of rice pretty much all the time, now't South Car'lina's out.' _We_ eat salt pork! or beans either, except very occasionally. There began to be serious symptoms of mutiny. Fippany and one or two others declaimed so violently against the outrage, that the more enthusiastic of us felt bound to use our influence to prevent the spread of a disaffection that seemed to us highly calculated to embarrass the action of the Government in this crisis. The end of it was that we marched up to our new quarters, and, in the excitement of moving in and receiving our clothing and camp and garrison equipage, had forgotten our troubles, when (just as the melancholy man discovered that the overcoats were seven short of the right number, that the mess pans all leaked, and that the quarters were full of fleas) our orders to move were countermanded, and we marched back again in joy. There were fewer volunteers for guard duty that night, and the natural rest of the sergeant of the guard was undisturbed save by the occasional nightmare of having overslept the hour for relieving the meek sentinels (not yet instructed in the art of awakening drowsy non-commissioned officers by stentorian alarms, and indeed not yet knowing accurately the measure of their 'two hours on'), or by some louder howl than usual from poor Todd second, who, having continued his course of eye-opening to the hours when sober citizens and prudent soldiers incline to close theirs, spent the major portion of the night in dramatic recitations of the beauties of Shakspeare, utterly neglecting and refusing to 'dry up,' although frequently admonished thereto by the growls and eke by the curses of his comrades.