The moon sends a beam through the leaves right into your eye, and you recall that it is the same old moon way down in Virginia that used to shine up in York State. You think how you and some one else who is far away used to lean across the gate, look at the moon and then at each other and sigh.
Then you wonder if some one is thinking of you. You wish you might get a slight wound so you could go home where all would be talking of your bravery. Perhaps it would touch some one’s heart so she would say “yes.”
Then you would think of your present condition; you wonder why it is that such a fellow as lazy Jim Lee should be “commissioned” instead of you, who never “shirked” a guard. You pronounce the war a failure, and would like to see the leaders on both sides hung. You wonder if your regiment will get into another battle to-day, and say to yourself that you don’t care if you get killed (you do though), and then you think of your poor comrade “Dave,” who was killed at your side yesterday morning in a charge on the enemy in that clump of “pines” over there at the right. You put your hand in your pocket and draw forth the lock of hair you cut from his head when his life’s blood was ebbing away, and _which_ he told you to send to his “dear old mother.” You brush the silent tear away that has commenced to course its way down your dust covered cheek.
Then from out the half-light sounds a solitary bugle, like the first wavering note of the roused bird, chirping good morning to its mate. A second bugle answers its _reveille_. Another and another sound along the line. The drums take up their morning rattle. Soon the air is filled with their deafening jubilee, for they beat with a perfect recklessness at the “get up” time of the camp. The hum of voices begin to rise. The roll call is gone through with. Mules whinner and horses neigh. The camps are alive. The birds sing, and--it is day. There comes the “relief guard.”
The following is the copy of an old letter yellow with age, that was sent home during wartime.
Having a little leisure time I thought I would send you a few lines.
You are aware that I am attached to the 2d N. Y. Heavy Artillery, or as the infantrymen call it, the “2d Weighty.” 1st brigade, 1st division, 2d Corps, under the command of Gen. Hancock; one of the finest looking soldiers in this or any other army, and what is better the boys all love him, and he is proud of his men. If you have kept track of the movements of the army of the Potomac I need not tell you the part that Hancock and his men have had in them.