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and south branches of the river, the latter part of the way moving with great caution. It was understood that one sound of the whistle meant that a line of battle was to be instantly formed on the right of the train, while two sounds rallied the men to the left. Arriving at the junction before mentioned, the bridge was found burned, the expedition could proceed no farther; and the regiment went into camp in shelter-tents, with orders to be ready constantly to march at fifteen-minutes' notice. The men slept with their accoutrements belted on.

The discomforts of this bivouac were great, a heavy rain falling during the night, and in many instances streams of water ran down the slope beneath the sleeping men.

On the morning of February 7 the regiment embarked on the train and returned to Harper's Ferry, arriving there at eight P.M. The men esteemed it a special favor to be allowed to sleep in the box-cars of the transportation train.

The next morning a camp was established on Cemetery Hill, above the village called Camp Hill, which consisted of sheltertents; the officers occupying an adjacent house.

Orders were issued on the 9th incorporating the Fourteenth in the third brigade, third division, Sixth Army Corps, Gen. Sedgwick's. This connection was destined to be of short duration. A picket-line, eight or ten miles long, was established from the Potomac to the Shenandoah. On this line the Fourteenth performed picket-duty. While stationed at Harper's Ferry, a good many subaltern promotions were made, and some of the insubordinate members were court-martialled. On the 11th of the month the regiment was relieved by the One Hundred and Second Penn., the former removing half a mile to Camp Sherborn, on Hall's Island in the Shenandoah.

While encamped here, Lieut. Tolman was promoted to the captaincy of Company E.

A detail of the regiment was posted in Loudon Valley, where Moseby, three weeks previously, had surprised a Union cavalry station in the night. It may be accounted certain, that, had Cole's cavalry been as vigilant as were the pickets of the Fourteenth, they could never have been surprised. Moseby was a

great instructor in the virtue and the art of Union alertness. The weather was intensely cold, and the camp was in no sense winter quarters. The men suffered severely, and could not keep warm.

Never was an order more rapturously applauded than that which came on February 24, for the regiment to return to Washington. Transportation was furnished that afternoon.

The regiment found itself again in Washington on the morning of the 25th, and the men felt as though they had come home from a strange country. They fondly speculated upon the return to the old haunts of duty, which had in a measure become endeared by association. They did not appreciate the fact that the death-rate in the regiment would be lowered by leaving the city; although the subsequent destination in the far South resulted, not in a diminution, but an alarming increase, of losses by disease. As the Fourteenth marched up New-Jersey Avenue, it was seen that Camp Adirondack was not to be re-occupied. Instead, the line of march led to the new and admirable barracks situated on the corner of Sixth and O Streets, recently constructed especially for the Fourteenth, and which it would have occupied in a few days had not the fright on the upper Potomac upset the expected arrangements. The commandingofficer knew, while at Harper's Ferry, that the guard-duty of the regiment in Washington was ended, and that it was intended for other service. The occupancy of the Sixth-street barracks was but temporary; and the men made the most of their brief stop in a city they had come to know well and to love, and which many of them were never to see again. On the 26th Lieut. C. P. Hall took command of Company C.

ARMY DISCIPLINE.

The Northern soldier was no minion or serf. He fully believed in the Declaration of Independence, and considered that every principle of American freedom was illustrated in his own personality. He could cheerfully endure unwonted privations and most arduous service; but would he, all unaccustomed to

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the inexorable rigor of military law, submit to the discipline of an organized armed force? The traditions of war had faded from the American mind. The militia was an ancient joke, and "trainins" were obsolete; the only reminiscences of them cherished by the fighting generation of 1861 being those of bear-skin caps, burlesque soldiering, pandemonium of drums, gingerbread, and beer.

One of the most interesting studies in connection with our civil war was the incidents and effects of discipline, as the civilian was being transformed to the experienced soldier. And we may here affirm that the process was inevitably a slow one. Nothing, unless it might be an unusual soldierly instinct or genius occasionally possessing a man, could obviate the necessity of prolonged training, and submission to rigorous codes, in order to economize life and effort, and to develop the highest efficiency. A battalion is eminently a machine; and its parts must be nicely adjusted by long use together, and made to run in prescribed grooves, if the intricate mechanism is to serve its end and turn out anticipated results. But observe the application of this principle to the formative processes of a regiment preparing for the crucial ordeal of deadly conflict.

The awful death-roll of the Union armies was lengthened at least one-fourth, probably one-third, by the want of wholesome though irksome discipline during the first months of service, in many cases continuing throughout the entire term. The task was little short of herculean, to bring a million self-centred human wills, most of them panoplied in an intelligence which no troops in all history had before attained, into implicit and unswerving obedience to one central and many subordinate commanders. We do not intimate that this was ever realized, except measurably; but the extent of failure was the measure of calamities to armies, disasters to the cause, and slaughters and hospital morgues for men who, brave, loyal, and noble, were yet restive under a discipline which might, if enforced and submitted to, have turned defeats into victories, and saved their lives.

A sort of trained consolidation, valuable surely, resulted from