Looking backward from a distance of forty years one must admit that it was much more comfortable soldiering around Washington than at the front with such fighters as Grant, Sheridan, Hancock, Warren, Wright, Gibbons and others “pushing things.” It was monotonous, however, and the men grew tired of drills, fancy guard mountings, dress parades, brightening of guns and polishing of brass buttons, and were troubled with the thought that the war might be brought suddenly to a close before they would have an opportunity to win any laurels. But everybody had their ambitions gratified before Lee surrendered, for there was fighting enough to go all around in that affair. SOME OF THE OLD FORTS. My first army home was at Fort Worth near Fairfax Seminary, about three miles from Alexandria. The site of old Fort Worth was a beautiful spot, about three hundred feet above the Potomac, and from its warlike parapets one could behold an entrancing panorama of country. To the south the Fairfax “pike” and the Orange and Alexandria railroad wended their way through as beautiful a little valley as the sun ever shone upon. Twenty-five years after the war I visited the place. The owner of the land on which the fort was built, and who served as a colonel in the Confederate army, then had a beautiful home on the site and utilized the old bomb-proof for an outside cellar. Near his barn was a little of the old parapet remaining and our party stood on the earthworks while our old regimental bugler, a man bent with the weight of more than three score years, sounded reveille, tattoo, and lights out. There were no dry eyes in the party when the last bugle notes echoed and re-echoed through the charming Virginia valley leading out toward Fairfax. REMORSE REVEALS A CHIVALROUS ACT. It is hardly necessary to say that we did some pretty deep thinking as we met that day on the old camp ground. Our comrades stood before us again--boys who had been schoolmates, the companions of our youth. We could almost hear their familiar voices, their songs and sayings, and we thought of where we parted with many of them, here and there along the way from Washington to Appomattox. The thoughts brought keen pangs of sorrow to us, yet withal there were many pleasant recollections revived. Looking off to the south we saw the same fine old southern mansion that was there in war times. We felt remorse for many foraging expeditions in which the fruit, sweet potatoes, ducks and chickens had been confiscated for the cause of Uncle Sam. We thought we would go and call on our old neighbors and make the _amende honorable_. The fine old southern lady freely forgave us with a graciousness characteristic of the women of the south. An invitation to lunch was extended and accepted. George, a colored boy, was told to go down the “Run” to the mill and tell her son, the colonel (no rank under a colonelcy is recognized in Virginia), to come up to the house and meet some of the old Second New York.