turned out, fell into line ready for business in short order but that was all there was to it; it was part of the exercise we were to become accustomed to, I imagine. We stayed at Baltimore three days and nothing out of the ordinary occurred. To be sure, we were not treated very cordially, but we were not insulted, we were just left severely alone. Personally, after I got a taste of the peaches and cantaloupes, I thoroughly enjoyed myself there. Those peaches and cantaloupes were of the finest kind and so cheap, I ate to my heart’s content—rather to my stomach’s content. August 29th we went to Annapolis, where we were quartered in the Naval School buildings. The cadets and everything that was movable had been taken to Newport, R. I. The grounds of the academy supplied us with a fine drill field and we utilized it constantly and became, as we thought, quite proficient. But one fine day as the troops assembled there to go on the Sherman expedition to Bufort and Port Royal, S. C., there came two German regiments from New York City. Every man was by birth a German and they had evidently been through the military training incident to all native German boys. Well, the evolutions of those regiments as they drilled were a revelation to us. None of us had at the time seen anything comparable with it and it made us feel as provincial as you please.

At Baltimore we had a glimpse of negro life,—but it was only a glimpse. We were there so short a time, and not being allowed to leave camp, all we saw was the glances we got as we marched through the city on our way to the camp and as we went away. But at Annapolis and on the railroad out in the country we had a chance to see something of the negro and negro life. Those we saw on the street and about the town at Annapolis were fairly well dressed and looked a little poorer only than those one would see in a northern city. One day, however, while out rowing with a crowd of the boys we landed at the wharf of a man in the oyster business; boat loads of oysters were arriving at the wharf, brought in by negroes who raked them, and in a small building were a number of negro men and women opening oysters. These last were a sight to be remembered. The negroes were hardly dressed at all, and the few clothes they had on were of the very coarsest material, and they looked about like the kind one would expect to see in Africa. Our cattle and horses in the North have the appearance of being better cared for, and as those negroes worked, there was no intimation of intelligence; they worked like horses in a treadmill. Later on, while doing picket duty out on the railroad, I saw a lot of cornfield negroes at a negro husking. There was a long pile of corn heaped up just as it was cut in the field and all around it sat the negroes husking. They sang most of the time a monotonous sing-song tune. There were present negroes from different parts of the plantation and there was a feud to be avenged. All at once each man whipped out an axe-handle and at each other they went with a fury thoroughly brutal, pounding each other on the body, head or anywhere. The overseers were soon after them and had them separated and at their husking again. The axe-handles, all that could be got hold of, were taken away from them. These field negroes, or cornfield negroes, are about the lowest and worst in the South. Great care has to be exercised to prevent them from getting hold of knives. Had half a dozen of these negroes had knives at that time there would have been a lot of blood spilled. There was quite a little spilled as it was.

October 22. There has been quite a bit of excitement the last two days in camp caused by the secreting in the grounds of a negro slave who was also assisted in his escape by some of the boys. The negro belonged to Governor Hicks and he was seen making his escape into the grounds. Colonel Morse did his best to find the negro but no one else gave himself any trouble about the matter. The negro was carefully hidden in an old chimney until night, when one of the boys stole a rowboat in the town, took it around to a little dark place behind some old sheds, loaded Mr. Negro into the boat, gave him a bag of hardtack and started him off down the sound in the direction of Baltimore.

It was no uncommon thing for negroes to be assisted in making their escape by the boys, but this negro, having been seen entering the grounds by the main gate, and the owner being no less a person than the Governor of the State, the affair was given exceptional importance.

Those of us boys who were fond of shell fish, had a treat at Annapolis. The famous Chesapeake Bay oysters were in abundance, cheap and delicious. Besides these, there was a kind of crab the fishermen brought to the wharf and sold to us, that was as sweet and as delicious as they could be.

October 29. Company K and three other companies were sent out on to the railroad between Annapolis and Annapolis Junction to do picket duty along the railroad, relieving the companies that had been out there while we were at Annapolis. When we boarded the train to go out, it was discovered that the orderly sergeant was drunk. It was his duty to have the camp equipment for each of the posts along the road all together, and kept together, that it could be unloaded from the train without delay at each of the different stations. When we reached the first station it was found that the camp equipage was in the same muddled state as the sergeant’s brains. It was the usual thing when a non-commissioned officer sinned to reduce him to the ranks. The orderly sergeant of Company K fared the regular fate in this instance. The new orderly sergeant was a man by the name of Charles Plummer, a stranger to all of us. He had joined the company just before we left Worcester. From what we had seen of him at that time, he gave us the impression of being a man of exceptional ability. The last vestige of life in the barracks ended at that time, after that we slept in tents, and each did his own cooking, such as it was. To break the monotony of our meals, different methods of treating hardtack were devised—like toasting, moistening and frying, etc. The canteen wash, when one was willing to carry the water from the stream to camp, rather than wash at the stream which was usual, consisted in one soldier holding the canteen and pouring the water on to the hands of No. 2, until No. 2 had got a good wash, then turning about and No. 2 holding the canteen and pouring the water for No. 1 to have a wash. Our washing of clothes was most of it done at the stream, but as we had no means of heating water they were not boiled and were not as clean as they might have been. It was a common thing for negro women to come around and get soiled clothes to wash.

Doing picket duty on the railroad we found very uninteresting and monotonous work, and we were greatly pleased when we heard Governor Andrew had been at Annapolis, had promised us new guns, and that we had been assigned to the Ninth Army Corps and were to go on the Burnside Expedition. Our stay on the railroad was thus cut short, and on December 18 we were relieved from further duty there, and returned to Annapolis. We then discovered that in our absence out on the railroad, a chaplain had arrived from Massachusetts, Rev. George S. Ball of Upton, a man whom, as time went on, we came to have the highest regard for.

December 19. Together with the rest of the troops assembled there, some ten or twelve thousand men, we were reviewed by General Burnside and on the 20th there was a grand inspection, after which we were told that the 21st had been assigned to the 2d, General Reno’s Brigade, and that we were the first regiment selected by the General and were to