“Well, Ohio is making a bad show of herself here to-day,” he said. “I have seen stragglers from a dozen Ohio regiments going past here for half an hour. Ohio expects better work from her sons than this.” As I was one of Ohio’s youngest sons, my state pride was touched. “Do you want to come and fight with us?” he asked. I responded that I was willing to take a temporary berth in his regiment. He asked me my name and especially inquired whether I had any friends on the field. I gave him my father’s name and regiment, and saw him make a careful entry in a little pass book, which he afterward placed in the bosom of his coat, as he rather sympathetically informed me that he would see, in case anything should happen to me, that my friends should know of it. Thus I became temporarily attached to Company B, of the Ninth Illinois Regiment, McArthur’s brigade. Several other men from other regiments who had been touched by this young officer’s patriotic appeals also took places in our ranks. Rather a strange situation that for a boy—enlisting on a battle field, in a command where there was not a face that he had ever seen before; only one face indeed, that had the least touch of sympathy in it, and that belonging to the young officer who had mustered him. We waited here for three-quarters of an hour before receiving the command to move. During that time, one of the regimental bands played “Hail, Columbia.” It was the first and only time that I heard music on a battle field. Finally the order came to move to the front. By this time the stream of fugitives on the road rendered it almost impassable, but we forced our way through them, and in due time reached the point where our men were being severely driven. At first we were sent to strengthen the line from point to point, and twice that morning our brigade was moved up to support field batteries, which service, I must say from my brief experience, is the most annoying in modern warfare. These batteries drew not only the artillery file of the enemy, but they furnished a point for the concentrated fire of all the infantry in front. To be in supporting position was to receive all the bullets that were aimed at the battery, and which, of course, usually vexed the rear. The shells intended for the battery in your front have a habit always of flying too high or bursting just high enough in air to make it pleasant for the troops who are held in comparative inactivity. Under these conditions, we hugged the ground very closely, and fallen timber of every kind was most gratefully and thankfully recognized. It is amazing how slowly time passes under these circumstances. I am sure there were occasions that morning when twenty minutes’ exposure to fire behind these field batteries seemed to me an entire week. Everything looked weird and unnatural. The very leaves on the trees, though scarcely out of bud, seemed greener than I had ever seen leaves, and larger. The faces of the men about me looked like no