There never was such a uniform as ours. Not even the 'Seventh' itself--incomparable in the eyes of the _three_-months'--could vie in grand and soldierly simplicity, we thought, with the gray and red of the 9th Battalion, District of Columbia Volunteers. Gray cap, with a red band round it, letters A S, for 'American Sharpshooters' (Smallweed used to say he never saw it spelt in that way before, and to ask anxiously for the other S), gray single-breasted frock coat, with nine gilt buttons, and red facings on the collar and cuffs. Gray pantaloons, with a broad red stripe down the outer seam. The drummers sported the most gorgeous red stomachs ever seen, between two rows of twenty little bullet buttons. The color rendered us liable to be mistaken for the rebels, it is true; but this source of anxiety to the more nervous among us was happily prevented from leading to any unfavorable results by the fatherly care displayed by poor old General Balkinsop, under whose protection, we were sent into the field, in always keeping at least a day's march from the enemy! When we non-commissioned staff officers were first promoted, we felt badly about leaving our companies; wanted to drill with them still, and so on. But this soon wore off under the pressure of new duties. For my part, I soon found that the adjutant, Lieutenant Harch, regarded it as quite a natural arrangement that the sergeant-major should attend to the office duties, while the adjutant occupied himself exclusively with what he was pleased to style the military part of the business; meaning thereby, guard mounting every morning and Sunday morning, inspection once a week, making an average of, say, twenty minutes work per diem for the adjutant, and leaving the poor sergeant-major enough to occupy and worry him for ten or eleven hours. 'Sergeant-major, publish these orders,' Lieutenant Harch would say, in tones of authority exceeding in peremptory curtness anything I have ever heard since from the commander of a grand army; and then, scraping a match--my match--upon the wall, he would begin attending to his 'military duties' by lighting a cigar--my cigar--and strolling up the avenue, on exhibition, preparatory to going home to dine, while the fag remained driving the pen madly, kindly assisted sometimes by Quartermaster-Sergeant Oates, until long after the dinner hour of the non-commissioned staff. I think the company commanders must sometimes have doubted (unless they carefully refrained from reading orders, as I have sometimes thought probable) whether the adjutant could write his name; for all our orders used to be signed: 'By order of Major JOHNSON HEAVYSTERNE: FREDERICK HARCH, 1st Lieutenant and Adjutant, By WILLIAM JENKINS, Sergeant-Major.'