tried to bring high and pure influences into their lives, so now at parting he would seek to give them a message of friendship, a token of perpetual comradeship in spirit, and would make known to them his great solicitude for their individual welfare, temporal and eternal. Again, and for the last time probably, he would entreat them to be courageous in the days of peace and in civic duties as they were in times of war and in the exactions of a military camp. Having faith in the boys, believing them to be his friends and prizing their friendship as his abundant reward for all he sought to do for them, he would now say, out of a heart of anxiety that each one of them may prosper in peaceful life and as a brave soldier come to the end of his earthly career victorious in all manner of virtue: Be strong and of good courage; be fearless champions of all that is right, true, and good; espouse and maintain the cause of the just, of the weak, and of the oppressed; resist the proud and the cruel; be an uncompromising foe of evil in all its forms; cherish for yourselves high and worthy ideals; strengthen your wills and gather moral force by manly resistance of wrong and by high achievement of good; strive against bad habits—conquer them if you are brave and wise, else they will conquer you; be loyal to what you have known from childhood to be the wise teachings of all good men. Finally, soldiers, follow Him who dared to die, alone, forsaken, upon the Cross of Calvary, that He might bring truth, love, mercy, righteousness, redemption to mankind. Follow Him! Follow Him!

I. PANORAMIC VIEW.

For a week, in Camp Alger, the boys of the Third have been clearing a forest, digging wells, building kitchen arbors and adobe furnaces, spading and raking about the tents and making themselves beds and other household conveniences out of the materials afforded by the forest primeval. From where I am now sitting, underneath the tall pines, in front of my tent, which a squad are putting in order, you can see a string of boys moving in this way or that, bearing logs from the clearing, or carrying a long pole toward the companies' quarters; while in the valley beyond the tents the Third New York is drilling to the music of bugle and drum, and a forest of oak trees rises beyond. Camp Alger occupies an old Virginia plantation of 1500 acres, about ten miles from Washington. But it is not under garden-like cultivation, as the name and location might suggest. It is a wilderness, with here and there a narrow winding road and a small open field. The various regiments—some twenty odd—are located in this vast, uncared-for estate, just where open space can be found or made. Ours was placed to the west of those already in the ground when we came, and assigned a little field of about 10 acres in extent. The Third New York is encamped along the north side of this field, while we are along the west, and both regiments use it for exercise. The old manor house lies south of us about half a mile. The newer part of the house was built early in this century of brick brought from England, while the older part belongs to the last century, and is built of wood. It is, of course, a historic place, and the lady of the manor told me many interesting things concerning the country around. One of the smooth, sandy roads winding through the estate was made by Washington; another is called "Gallows' Lane," because, during the civil war, so many Union pickets met their fate there at the hands of Col. Mosby's men.

The Third does not have so many visitors at Camp Alger as it had at Jefferson Barracks, and the "producer," that is, the young lady who brings a box of dainties to her soldier laddie, is conspicuously absent. Still, we have not been wholly neglected. Several Missourians living in Washington, among them some congressmen, have visited us. They speak of our regiment in the highest terms of praise, and promise to use their influence to get us early to the front. As for ourselves, having a good opinion of our rank, we expect to be among the first on Cuban soil.

I do not know what impression the newspaper accounts of the Third have made upon your minds, but the impression everywhere made by the boys themselves has been extremely favorable. Every one I talked with in St. Louis, spoke in highest praise of the gentlemanly behavior of the Third—in contrast, I am sorry to say, to some other regiments. And it was so all along our journey eastward. Wherever we stopped any length of time, as at Louisville, Cincinnati and Parkersburg, the papers spoke in the most commendatory terms of our men. We were at Parkersburg nearly a whole day, and "took in" the town. The dailies of that place each gave us a column write-up that made us feel proud of the standard of conduct maintained by our regiment.

If a spectacular, dramatic representation of the Third Regiment in Camp Alger could be put upon the stage it would be more than the success of the season. I suggest this as an opportunity for any Missourian whose aspirations tend toward the dramatic in literature. The writer would have only to be a faithful copyist with enough of the artist's sense and imaginative faculty to select the characteristic and telling features, and present them on a thread of romance. Let me just go about with him a day and show him what he could work into a fine spectacular performance.

First, the general scene shall be a vast wilderness of pines, cedars, oaks and chestnuts, and other forest trees, with a tangled undergrowth of vines, ferns, mosses, blackberry bushes, shrub honeysuckle, laurel and other flowering plants; narrow, sandy roads, worn deep into the red soil by a century of travel, wind through this wilderness; and here and there as they lead, in their windings, over hill and vale, through deep shades, crossing now and then a clear, rippling stream to which thrushes sing and where mosses and ferns cluster thickly to the water's edge, there should appear in the great forest a little open field, whose yellow soil lies broken into furrows only in strips, indicating to what extent farming had been carried when the government laid hold upon the vast old estate for an army camp.

The Third Regiment shall be placed at the western edge of a small field that opens in the midst of a wilderness and slopes gently southward and eastward toward spring-fed streams that are hidden by shrubbery and fringed by many ferns. The time shall be a day in June, and the action shall open with the rising of the sun. From the higher ground, where the staff officers' tents are situated at the extreme west side under the towering oaks and pines, we shall watch the sun appear above the wooded hill to the east and drive away the white mist in the vale below, while the wild birds, the robins and thrushes, are greeting the dawn with happy lays. The mess fires beyond the tents are started, and in the still air of morning their columns of smoke rise and outspread tall and graceful.

Hark! The bugle sounds the first call. How it thrills the very soul and makes you feel all the grand opportunity of the new day, awakening the old hope never dead, and kindling enthusiasm for life's enterprises ever new! Who would not waken to hear it, however sweet his morning slumbers might be to him? waken to hear, though he should turn over upon his canvas cot and float away into dreamland again with the inspiring notes still echoing through his soul. But if he lies awake he will hear from one quarter "Dixie," it may be, played by the band of some other regiment; shortly afterward, "The Star-Spangled Banner" by another, and then the drum corps of our New York neighbors will make sleep utterly impossible. Then follows our full bugle corps, with revéille proper: