But I anticipate. Prior to the issue of the clothing, and while the affairs of the camp were conducted in this go-as-you please manner, more civil than military, one evening the Colonel arrived, a West Pointer, and recently from service in the regular army in the field. At once there seemed to be a general impression throughout the camp, which cannot perhaps be expressed better than by the use of a phrase common on that ship-building coast, "that there was the devil to pay and no pitch hot." The Colonel, a thoroughly trained soldier, saw things, to him new and strange, and perhaps with a prejudiced eye. It was his first experience with volunteers, and he found them in their most immature condition. The respectable citizen who seemed to be half loafing, half on guard at the Headquarters' tent did not salute, and, in fact, had nothing military to salute with, but cheerfully remarked "How do you do, Colonel." Him the Colonel regarded as a villain of the deepest dye and perhaps as a fool into the bargain. But this was all of a piece with the general appearance of the camp, so far as the Colonel saw it. Once in the tent he sent an orderly disguised as an honest citizen of the State, and who did not know, in fact, that he was an orderly, for the officer of the day. When that friend appeared, the Colonel propounded questions to him which he had never heard before, and never dreamed of. If the Colonel had inquired about hexameter verse or the volume of the cycloid, he might have obtained perhaps prompt and correct answers. But concerning the details of guard mounting and the duties of his office, the embryo Captain and Officer of the Guard was as ignorant as a spring chicken; and after some fruitless pursuit of information the Colonel expressed the opinion that it was "A hell of a regiment," and terminated the interview. The officer of the day went out with the impression that he had smelled something sulphurous, and that the Colonel was correct in his location of the regiment. However, the men were speedily put into uniform, company books were distributed, and there was a scramble, under pressure from Headquarters, for information as to tactics and army regulations. Commissions for the officers came from the Governor, and uniforms from the tailor; the mustering officer appeared, and these miscellaneous gentlemen of various previous occupations and training, suddenly became officers and men, in the army of the United States, tailor-made and Governor-made. Probably the parchments and the textile fabrics had been selected with quite as much care and discrimination as the raw material which they covered and designated. Certainly the commissions and uniforms were made by rule and in accordance with the army regulations. The officers, so far, had simply happened.