APPRECIATION OF THE LADIES.

85

and beaming with intelligence, the presence of these ladies awakened fresh memories of home and the well remembered associations of other days; kindled anew the love for wives, mothers, sisters and sweethearts, and endeared every adjunct of femininity left behind. The roughest soldier in the ranks was chastened into propriety, behaved better, aye, and fought better, from the presence of true, loyal and lovely women among them. An influence for good pervaded the camp from their being in it. Their visits to the hospital and ministrations to the suffering ones gave life and hope where else would have been despair and death.

Mrs. Greusel knew what it is to be the wife of a soldier, and the patient endurance of long months of separation, with the care of children on her hands, while the husband is away in his country's service. She had passed through it all while her husband was fighting the country's battles on the plains of Mexico. Truly the country owes much to its heroic daughters as well as to its brave sons.

Mrs. Pearce was a superb horsewoman, an easy, graceful rider, and flashed over the hills and valleys like a ray of light, and often alone, as free and fearless as a trooper.

Pay-day came at last-we had begun to despair of ever seeing its bright dawning-and the regiment was made happy by the appearance of Major Kinney with his money bags. That night the men retired to their bunks rejoicing in the possession of their hard earned shekels. Many thousands of it were sent home to gladden the hearts of wives and children, while other thousands changed hands by the shuffle of the cards, and by all the tricks and devices which camp followers and camp leeches could invent to wring the hard earned cash from the pockets of their fellows. Not the least in expressions of satisfaction at the appearance of this auspicious day was the sutler. He did an enormous business at an enormous profit, and at night his establishment was as

empty of eatables and articles of prime necessity as though a rebel army corps had gone through it.

But if pay-day was fraught with blessings to some, it brought its curse upon others. I doubt if twelve hundred men can be promiscuously brought together, but that some will be found with a constitutional thirst for intoxicating liquors. Men who were thought to be exemplary in their habits were now found in that soggy condition which induces the hugging of telegraph poles in the laudable endeavor of steadying the world. Notwithstanding stringent orders against its introduction, somehow "tarantula " found its way to Rolla.

A trooper belonging to Company B Cavalry, who had suffered for two whole months without a glass of whisky, nay, without so much as a smell of it, found means for getting out of camp and soon was drunk-drunk all over; he continued so for three days, and of course for that period was absent from roll-call. After sobering up he returned to camp, reported his absence and the cause of it to the Colonel, who reproved him sharply, but as this was his first offense he concluded not to punish him, making him promise, however, to keep sober in the future. On reporting to Capt. Smith for duty, that officer caused his immediate arrest, personally assisted in tying his hands, gagging him by passing a rope through his mouth, and then jerked the poor fellow about the Company quarters until his mouth and tongue were badly lacerated and bleeding; then, just for the fun of the thing, kicked him brutally as he lay helpless on the ground. This was too much for average human nature to endure, and the men interfered and rescued their comrade from further violence. Ascertaining the extent of his injuries, a simultaneous rush was made for the Captain, with the avowed intention of putting an eternal quietus to his kicking and gagging propensities. The uproar

DISMISSAL OF CAPT. SMITH.

87

caused by these summary proceedings attracted the attention of the officer of the day, who called out the camp guard for the Captain's protection, but he had to leave camp and sought refuge in a house in the outskirts of the town, where he lay concealed during the night and succeeding day. The next night he was secretly conducted to Dillon, a station six miles from Rolla, on the railroad, and when the next train passed he went with it to St. Louis. He was afterward cashiered and dismissed from the service. Such brutality might be appreciated among Camanche savages, but the army of the United States, particularly that branch of it to which by some unfortunate circumstance he had been attached, could very well dispense with his services. He was succeeded in the command of the Company by SAMUEL B. SHERER, of Aurora.

The weather during these days of patient waiting at Rolla was for the most part delightful. Never was there a more favorable time for marching, and that we were to advance very soon was taken for granted. Whither and when, were questions which ruled the hour. Squads of prisoners, reports of skirmishes and occasional mutterings of battle from the south-west, where Fremont was driving all before him, gave rise to conjectures as to a time in the near future when we should receive orders to march to our first baptism of blood. Rumors as usual often fixed the hour, but day succeeded day and weeks followed in quiet succession, and we did not move. It was not for subordinates unacquainted with all the reasons for delay to trouble themselves on this point, so we made the best of it, gradually settling down to bear with cheerful philosophy the monotony of camp life. Abundance of food was served to the men; Joe, the sutler, was always ready to add to the government ration his supplementary trash, and the pie and cake women still found a ready market for

their leathery wares. So passed September, October and November; the hills, fields and woodland basking in glorious sunshine. We realized in its rich fulness the appropriateness of the term, "The sunny South."

There were times when the south-west winds would come rushing through camp rather too briskly for comfort; when clouds of dust would roll up from the parade ground; hats, shingles and clothing hung out to air would be caught in the breeze and go skurrying eastward. At such times the principal occupation of the men on returning from drill would be to dig the sand and gravel from their eyes, the dust from their ears, and with soap and towel proceed to remove the strata of Missouri soil which masked their faces and was sprinkled in superlative nastiness over their clothing and person.

By the last of November the air became crisp and frosty. The winds changed to the north, and men wrapped in their overcoats and mufflers went shivering to their posts of duty. The skies became overcast with dark, heavy clouds, giving notice of the approach of winter. Then came the rain; not in gentle showers to lay the dust, usually more refreshing than disagreeable, but a cold, driving storm, mixed with sleet, which, aided by the wind, sought every nook and cranny about the camp; through every opening into the tents; penetrating the clothing and cutting the faces of such as were compelled by duty to endure it. Canals and ditches for drainage purposes were dug and means adopted for preventing the deluging of the quarters, or the winds from eddying under and through the canvas-walled habitations. The weather accomplished what the wishes of the men had failed to effect, and the daily drills for a time were suspended.

For hours the patient cooks sought to work out the difficult problem of how to make a fire from green wood, in a puddle and

COOKING UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

89 midst the driving rain. Fire and water were brought into fierce conflict, fire finally triumphing, and a pale, sickly flame flickered up through the dark smoke-wreaths; not enough for warmth, but sufficient to simmer the coffee and soften the beans, which, together with hard tack, eaten in the tents, were the luxuries we thrived upon. The trails cut through the brush, which by some misnomer were called roads, were changed to quagmires, through which the army wagons sent out for wood were with difficulty dragged. Little mud holes became miniature lakes. Unless duty imperatively required it, the men remained quietly in camp. A trip to the outposts was like an aquatic excursion, better performed by web-footed horses and men.

This season of alternate rain and snow, of "sailing through muddy seas," lasted but a few days, when again from a rift in the clouds the sun looked smilingly down and greeted us. Such was the winter of 1861-2 in Missouri; alternating from sleet to sunshine, from roads as hard as pavements, to seas of plastic. mud. Without ice and with little snow, and hills not frozen to adamant, like the stern-visaged Winter of the North.

With the abandonment of the southwest and return of the army to Rolla, came vast crowds of refugees, fleeing not only from rebel outrage, but from starvation and death. Their few remaining goods, chattels and effects spared by the plundering hordes of Price and the guerrilla bands which everywhere ranged the country for spoil, were tumbled promiscuously into dilapidated ox-carts or squeaking wagons drawn by jaded oxen or horses, as lean and starved as Pharaoh's kine. Each convoy was accompanied by a pack of lank, wolfish dogs and swarms of ragged, sunburned children on foot, often without shoes. They took their sorrowful journey as outcasts from the homes which had sheltered them, and with the North Star as their cynosure they fled to the