What is camp-life like? What did we do? How did we fare? What scenes, incidents, and episodes occurred? These are questions everyone wishes answered by somebody who "saw it all." If one cannot paint, one should have the dramatic skill of a Schiller to render all this picturesque manner of life worthily vivid to the reader. How rich it is in its free manifestations of human nature! No restraint here upon one's being and seeming to be what he is. The qualities, good and bad, of our common humanity, therefore, appear unrestrained by the conventionalities, undisguised by the false glosses of civil society. All here has reverted to primitive conditions.

Enter the camp with me, if you will, and we shall watch together this moving panorama of soldier life; we shall see and hear and feel what as visions and impressions will remain with us forever—and not painfully so altogether, either on account of the evils or the hardships, for everywhere the good is more than the evil and the hardships are endured as by brave soldiers. If your heart be sound and good, as the examining surgeon assured me mine was; if you appreciate the immense significance of this national uprising in arms in the cause of humanity; and if you assume, as you rightly should, that this high motive has mainly influenced these men to enlist and offer their lives—then the scenes of the army shall be to you unforgettable evidences of the life energies awakened and the ideals vivified of a people hitherto supposed to be hopelessly materialistic in their thoughts and mercenary in their ways.

The contents of this little book, with the exception of two brief chapters, are letters that were written in camp from time to time and published in different newspapers. It is thought best to present them just as they originally appeared, believing they will thereby most faithfully and vividly bring the characteristics of camp-life before the reader.

Robert T. Kerlin, Chaplain.