If the story of the making of this regiment is worth the telling, that is not because it is in any way exceptional but because it is typical. Some regiments were more fortunate than ours in their first commanders; some met the test of battle sooner. Details vary, yet the process through which we went is a fair example of that by which hundreds of thousands of peaceful American citizens were transformed into the soldiers of one of the most formidable armies of history. The process was not ideal; it was in many ways illogical, unmilitary and wasteful; yet its results have seldom been surpassed. The Household of the Hundred Thousand The site of the old home camp, the first mustering ground of many regiments, is now covered with pretty suburban homes about which I sometimes think, the ghosts of war times must play at midnight. For us young fellows it was a rude beginning of real life when we found ourselves inside the great board fence and line of sentries which enclosed the rows of rough, wooden barracks. The members of our own company were indeed mostly neighbours, their faces were familiar, we had grown up together; yet never before had we been thrown into such intimate association. It is one thing to meet a man every day on the street or even at work; it is quite another to be compelled to bunk with him and take your breakfast out of the same camp-kettle. For the youth who had been kept in a glass case at home this experience was trying and often disastrous, but for the most of us it was wholesome. We learned our own hitherto-unsuspected faults, we discovered the good qualities of even our most faulty comrades, we saw human nature at close range. Even the officers could not escape the influence of this enforced commingling. They had, indeed, separate quarters and their own mess; they stood also on a vantage ground of almost despotic authority, for from the moment when we were mustered into service we were subject to the same military law which governed the regular army. But drawn as our officers were from the same mass, knowing their men for old neighbours, often for intimate friends, frequently for those who had been at least their social equals they could not hold themselves far aloof, and few of them cared to do so. They could form no separate caste and this, perhaps, had its disadvantages; but for these there were certainly large compensations. It became necessary for an officer to prove his right to rank by qualities of leadership. The best officers were those who, without sacrifice of dignity kept a lively sense of comradeship with their men.