performed with a precision which could scarcely have been surpassed had they been a battalion of regulars in garrison with spotless uniforms and white gloves. When we reached Hagerstown we found that we were assigned to a brigade of veterans, Yankees from the far North, who had come from their ancestral mountain farms at the first call of their country. They were, in many respects, a contrast to our friends whose dress parade we had witnessed. For those military forms and ceremonies so dear to the heart of the professional soldier they had small regard. They were noted foragers. Their commander, an officer of the regular army who afterwards became a distinguished division chief, said of them with mingled vexation and admiration, "I never saw such men. It is impossible to tire them out. No matter how far or how hard you march them, at night they will be all over the country stealing pigs and chickens." Their five regiments were all from one State, and their _esprit de corps_ was very strong. With quaint Yankee drawl they used to boast, "This old brigade has never been broke, and it never shall be." And I think they made good their word to the end. They obeyed their officers with prompt devotion, but only because they knew that this was a necessary part of discipline; they had small reverence for rank or place. One of them once said to me, "When I am on guard, if I see an officer coming I always try to be at the other end of my beat, so that I won't have to salute him." And yet in small essentials these men were very precise soldiers. One evening one of them came over from his regiment to visit us. The enemy suddenly opened fire from his batteries away beyond the river. It was a common occurrence. There was no special danger; the regiments were not even formed in line; yet this veteran promptly took his leave. "You know," he said, "that when firing begins a man ought to be in his place in his own company." It was so always. With all their independence and contempt for conventionalities, the discipline prevailing in that brigade was really most rigid. They were not fond of reviews, and took no special pains to make a show on such occasions; but to see the splendid line they kept in that deadly charge on the Fredericksburg heights, when one of their small regiments lost over a hundred men in a few moments, was enough to bring tears of admiration from a soldier's eyes; and at Salem Heights, when at evening Stonewall Jackson's men, concentrated in overwhelming force, came down upon us in sudden, savage charge, and the brigade at our right was "smashed like a pitcher thrown against a rock," when every other hope seemed gone, these Yankees stood firm, with unbroken ranks, and saved the Sixth Corps from disaster.