In active campaigning, our camps were apt to be hasty, though never disorderly bivouacs, and even if a few days' halt were made and the camp duly formed, rest for weary and foot-sore men took precedence of drill and, in fact, of everything not absolutely necessary. But one thing was inevitable as day and night. This was roll-call. In storm or sunshine, in camp or on the march, before and after battle, the first thing in the morning and the last at night, we had to answer to our names. The first serjeant calls the roll. He knows the list by heart, and calls it off without book, in the dark if need be. At first irritatingly suggestive of that more than schoolboy tutelage which is one penalty of a soldier's life, the morning and evening roll-call by its insistent monotony gradually grew into an accepted item of existence, like salt pork and hard-tack. But when exposure, toil, and battle began to thin the ranks, the roll-call gained a new meaning; it became a none too oft-repeated personal history of our lives, a daily bulletin of passing events and a reminder of those already past. It told of the sick and disabled, of those fallen out by the way, prisoners perhaps in the hands of the enemy, here and there of one promoted, here and there of one dead. There were days when those of us who could answer to our names did so with a feeling of solemn thankfulness and other days when the omission, or perhaps the inadvertent calling of a name sent a rush of sad remembrance through the ranks. Imagine, if you can, the roll-call at night after a day of battle!--the mustering of the thinned company in the darkness; the suspense as the familiar names are spoken--it may be by an unfamiliar voice, for in battle death seemed to seek and find the serjeants; the frequent pauses for inquiry; perhaps the answer of a comrade for one who has fallen, perhaps a mournful silence. Oh, those silent names! For days, yes, for weeks and months every now and then you seem to hear them at evening roll-call, and somewhere, close beside you it may be, an unseen presence seems to whisper: "Here!" I think all who passed through it remember the winter of the Fredericksburg campaign with a shudder. Preceding the battle came freezing nights with thawing days, rain-soaked or snow-bound camps; days when our little tents were first buried in the snow, then frozen so stiff that when marching orders came we could scarcely strike or fold them; then short but horrible marches through slush and mud with our doubly-heavy half-frozen loads; scanty rations withal because of delayed supply trains: a month of exposure, discomfort, and misery.