I was a young soldier of the Army of the Potomac in those days; one of the several thousand who wore the white cross of the Second Division of the Sixth Army Corps, and the Song in all its variations became a familiar sound. For instance, once when we were occupying the hills north of the Rappahannock, nearly half the regiment were on the sick list by reason of the bad water which supplied our camp. Down by the river bank, perhaps a mile and a half away was a spring of good clear water. "Joe" and myself, both non-commissioned officers, thought we must at all hazards keep fit for duty, and on alternate mornings one of us would make the trip to fill our canteens. Wide and open fields lay between us and the spring and I think I never crossed that open space without hearing the Song. Preceding a distant detonation from beyond the river a faint quavering whistle would come, growing louder as with apparently increasing hurry it drew near. It seemed to speak in fascinating, insinuating tone of some very special message to you alone; then suddenly, with venomous buzz in your very ear while your heart stood still it would speed by and die away again in the farther distance. It was the voice of a minié bullet from the rifle of some sharpshooter on the Confederate picket line. But the range was long, the risk slight, as such things went, and not to be compared, so Joe and I thought, to the very real danger of the camp water. Toward evening one of our field batteries would gallop down to the river bank and open fire upon those troublesome sharpshooters; then the heavy guns on the other side would make reply and a new variation of the Song would be heard--a very Wagnerian orchestral effect: the quick crack of the field guns, the more distant boom of the siege cannon, the scream of shells rushing hither and thither through the evening air, always with that rising and falling cadence, that mournful moan, that peculiar hurrying, threatening, almost speaking quaver which, once heard goes with you evermore, so that years afterwards you hear it in your dreams. Those big shells from the enemy's guns three miles away made regular evening visits to our camp. They seldom did any real harm. When we first occupied the position, a few tents were pitched too near the crest of the hill within sight of the gunners beyond; but after one of those tents had been torn to rags and the head of a poor fellow standing near had been neatly shorn off, everything came down behind the slope out of view; and though we were always favoured with our vesper serenade and close calls were not uncommon, no one else, I think, was seriously hurt.