XCI
Camp Marston, Washington, D. C.,Saturday, June 6, 1863.
Camp Marston, Washington, D. C.,Saturday, June 6, 1863.
Camp Marston, Washington, D. C.,Saturday, June 6, 1863.
Camp Marston, Washington, D. C.,
Saturday, June 6, 1863.
JUSTat present we are not living very high—not near as well as we did at Falmouth. But George Slade is cook for the company, and he says: “When you want something special, Mart, just give me the wink, and if it’s in the cook house you’ll get it.” This noon we had boiled potatoes and boiled salt pork. Tonight we are to have hasty pudding and molasses. Somebody has been stealing everything eatable lying around loose in the cook house, and Slade has gone down to the city to buy some ipecac. He will set his trap and there is bound to be some awfully sick fellows about camp before long.
I cut a lot of bullrushes down by the East Branch this afternoon—enough to thickly carpet the whole floor of our tent—and they make a glorious bed indeed.
Monday evening the third brigade of the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps, who have been camped on this side for some time, crossed the river, and the Second and Fourteenth New Hampshire and Thirty-fourth Massachusetts are now the only troops on this side. The Fourteenth is doing provost and guard duty in the city.
We got a belated mail last Tuesday. I had a letter from Frank Morrill dated March 2, one from you dated February 24, and a paper from Roger mailed in February. This mail had been hung up in Washington ever since we went home. Of course the boys had lots of fun circulating items of “news.”
Last Wednesday, as I had a pass, I went down to the city, sight seeing. In the forenoon I visited the Patent Office and was greatly interested. Besides the models of inventions there were many relics and curios—Washington’s effects, the presents from the Emperor of Japan, treaties made with various nations, the coat Gen. Jackson wore at New Orleans, and thousands of other objects of interest. In the afternoon I went down to the Capitol. I have been there many times before, but never tire of looking over that building. There are now about five hundred men at work on it. The next time I have a pass I am going down to the Navy Yard.
Gen. Marston was up here Wednesday, looking fat and hearty.
Our cooks have got a barrel of potatoes and a lot of cookingutensils, bought from the “company funds.” This is about the first use that has ever been made of this fund. Our company’s fund now amounts to several hundred dollars, and some of the boys were making ugly inquiries as to why it was not being used for the benefit of the men to whom it belongs.
The drummers and fifers of the regiment have been on exhibition for the past half hour, at the same time giving us a concert that it would not be easy to catalogue. Of all the rattletybang and screeching! On dress parade they made a blunder, then had a big jabbering over it, and came pretty near having a fight. As a punishment they were mounted on barrels out on the parade ground and ordered to do their best. They have a very appreciative and enthusiastic audience, but are about the maddest set of men I ever saw. I wouldn’t be surprised if, after we get paid off, some of the indignant musicians turned up missing.
Sunday, June 7.
Sunday, June 7.
Sunday, June 7.
Sunday, June 7.
We had a good rain last night and it is cool and nice today. We have had our morning inspection and expect to be gone over, later, by one of Gen. Casey’s staff officers. We had forty rounds of cartridges dealt out this morning. They are called “musket shells”—made to explode—and woe to the Johnny that stops one! We had boiled ham this morning. I got a big bone for my ration, gnawed off all I wanted for breakfast, and have enough left for supper, when no meat ration is served. Just think of it—your husband hiding away bones, like a dog, against future needs.
Alba Woods just sailed down by my tent spreading a story he heard in another company—that Companies I and F are going up to Chain Bridge today. I don’t care a darn, one way or the other.
Being right here in Washington, we put on a good many airs—white gloves, shiny boots, &c. To see the regiment on dress parade now one would hardly recognize it as the same set of men that we have seen plugging through the Virginia mud or dust, dirty, ragged, and lousy.
We have another man in our tent—one of the Seventeenth—James C. Rand. He is nineteen years old, was married just before he came away, and was in the Sixth New Hampshire a while.