The new uniforms came at last, and all the slang epithets with which our regiment had been received were duly transferred to the newly arrived squads of the next in order. Then we began to speculate on the time and mode of our departure. It was remarkable how keenly the most contented dispositions entered into these questions. There is in military life a monotony of routine, and at the same time a constant mental excitement, that make change--change of some sort, even from better to worse--almost a necessity. I had already stretched myself in my bunk one evening, and was half asleep, when I heard joyful voices cry out, 'That's good!' and unerring instinct told me that orders had come for the ----th to move. On the third day again we stood in our ranks upon the muddy esplanade of the Benton Barracks, patiently waiting for the A. A. A. G. and the P. Q. M. to get through the voluminous correspondence which was to result in quarters and rations. At least twenty thousand men were crowded at that time into this dismal quadrangle. Perseverance and patience could overcome the prevalent impression at the commissary that every new regiment was a set of unlawful intruders, to be starved out if possible, but could not conquer the difficulty of crowding material bodies into less space than they had been created to fill. Two companies had to be packed into each department intended for one. As for 'field and staff,' they were worse off than the privates, and took their first useful lesson in the fact that they were by no means such distinguished individuals in the large army as they had been when showing off their new uniforms at home. It must have been comforting to over-sensitive privates to hear how colonels and quartermasters were snubbed in their turn by the 'general staff.' The regimental headquarters, where these crest-fallen dignitaries should have laid their weary heads, were tenanted by Captains A., who had a pretty wife with him, and B., who gave such nice little suppers, and C., whose mother was first cousin to the ugly half-breed that blew the general's trumpet from the roof of the great house in the centre. Wherefore the colonel, the surgeon, the chaplain, the quartermaster, and the 'subscriber' were content to spread their blankets for the first night with a brace of captains, on the particularly dirty floor of Company F., and dream those 'soldier dreams' in which Mrs. Soldier and two or three little soldiers--assorted sizes--run down to the garden gate to welcome the hero home again, while guardian angels clap their wings in delight and take a receipt for him as 'delivered in good order and well-conditioned' to the deities that preside over the domestic altar.