and the poison absorbed by the pools of nasty, filthy water we were compelled to drink and use for cooking, men's eyes turned gamboge, and their skins became livid, and their flesh shrank as if from contact with such an atmosphere, and their bones ached, and by tens and twenties, and hundreds, and thousands, the strongest of us gave way, fairly broken down by this demon. He is a demon of many nicknames. Some call him Cholera, others Yellow Fever; in the East he trades as the Plague, in the West as the Shakes; to us, he came under the innocent names of Diarrhoea, and Camp Fever, Jaundice, and Typhoid. And he had his hands full. What though we drank commissary whiskey till we were half drunk, or swallowed quinine till our heads buzzed again-what could "antifogmatics" do while we absorbed the terrible poison with every respiration? The living rotted faster than the dead. The dead multiplied like white mice.

Men's minds, too, festered with their bodies. Stragglers loafed to the rear and encamped in pairs or squads on their own hook; officers saw them, but took no note, or only cursed feebly, or pretended to do something. The once jolly mess-tables, that used to ring with jests and laughter, and shine with wit and good-humor, now heard only the continuation of the low, peevish growl that resounded through that camp. A poisoned army lying still in camp has about as much morale as you may find in a sheep-fold.

At the battle of Fair Oaks, our regiment numbered twentyfour officers and seven hundred and three men present, of whom twenty-two officers and six hundred and eighty-seven men were fit for duty. At the end of three weeks thereafter we reported seventeen commissioned officers and five hundred and eight men present, of whom nine officers and two hundred and fifteen men were fit for duty, the remainder being "sick in quarters" (i. e., rotting where they were, under the broiling sun), or sick in regimental hospital (i. e., dying a few yards off, in "the piney woods"). Save that the well men looked a reddish sallow, and the sick ones a greenish sallow, I hardly know which were the sallowest.

It was more surprising to me in those days, than amusing, to note the different effects of this state of things on the minds of my mess-mates. To see how the sanguine men degenerated into atrabiliousness, and the quiet ones lighted up with a calm fortitude superior to every terror, and the croakers croaked on! Chaplain Bender, very much to the joy of the whole messexcept Colonel Heavysterne, who thinks it necessary to make allowances for everybody, and that all men are exactly alikestayed behind when we crossed the Chickahominy, and was not heard of for a week afterward, when we received an order from Head-Quarters, Army of the Potomac, through Corps, Division

and Brigade Head-Quarters, detailing him to go North on some loafing billet or other, to take home the men's pay or accompany the wounded, or I know not what invention of clericomilitary genius.

"Bless him, let him go-0-0-0-0 !

And joy go with him, too!"

We shouted in chorus as I announced the order at tea-time ;we always had tea in our mess, for the benefit of Smallweed and myself, whom the others called old maids in consequence, not that they drank less than we, but that we confessed our weakness first, and the legends of the world must be satisfied. Old Doctor Peacack kept his countenance of an oily ruddiness by means of copious libations of quinine and whiskey-occasionally, I fear, forgetting the quinine; and in this respect it must be confessed that "Old Pills," as he was irreverently called, even to his red face, practised what he preached, for I never met a more steadfast upholder of the alcoholic creed. He believed in the whiskey-cure for every thing and that all the evils currently attributed to that mode of practice sprang from dilution. "Don't drink that water," he would say. "Good God! young man, you'll ruin your stomach!" Naturally enough, the doctor thought every thing was going to the "demnition bow-wows," as Mr. Mantalini says, very fast, but gave himself very little care on this or any other subject. Indeed, I think the gigantic quantities of whiskey he swilled held his ideas on most subjects in constant solution; and I wish I could say as much of his assistant surgeon, young Doctor Launcelot Cutts, who would insist on entertaining us with his opinions upon every subject at prodigious length and without an instant's hesitation. Just now he did the dismal strategy for us, decimated us by fearful and complicated diseases at breakfast, routed us and cut us to pieces for dinner, and drove us in confusion into the James River for tea. The mess used to poke fun at him awfully. "Can I get a copy of those closing remarks of yours?" Smallweed would ask; or "would you favor us with an abbreviated statement of your plan for the reconstruction of the solar system, under the supervision of the medical director?" Even Colonel Heavysterne one day stopped eating-which was his chief occupation at the table, next to laughing at the young men's jokes-to ask him if he had got his orders yet; and on his asking innocently, not suspecting the old gentleman of a joke, "What orders?" answered, "Assigning you to the command of the Army of the Potomac." Whereupon there was a roar, followed by a shout of "How are you, Deputy Sawbones?" from the pit, as we used to call the fellows who thought such slang funny. Lieutenant Peck, formerly our commissary sergeant, who was promoted to be commissary on the death of poor Tiffany, astonished us all

by ventilating the most hopeful views of things when every one else desponded, and by desponding when every one else was rejoicing. He seems to have fancied himself a kind of escapement to regulate the flow of our animal spirits; for I am sure he saw things too clearly, and was entirely too steady and cool-headed, to be carried away by either extreme. As for Smallweed, he continued melancholy to the last, and took no comfort save in the general blackness of things; though I am bound to say, to his credit, that his growl was always goodhumored and amusing, and more likely to provoke a smile or a laugh than to spread his own melancholy. Indeed, I often think the latter is but skin-deep-a veil assumed to hide a large but too sensitive heart; to screen a generous nature from the vulgar stare. His rind was bitter enough, but the core was surpassingly sweet and mellow. He spied out meanness by intuition, and hated it most energetically. Not Dr. Johnson himself could have been a better hater, and I never knew a better friend. In those gloomy days, it was his quaint, humorous growling that kept me up far more than the froth of the boasters. Indeed, my common sense curdled all such milk-andwater views, and made them sit uneasily on my stomach.

One evening, toward the end of that hot June, after an insufferable day, we were dining languidly under the brush arbor behind the colonel's tent, almost worried to death by the incessant but futile effort to draw a distinction between blow-flies and beefsteak. The complaints had been more than usually loud, the curses at our condition more than ordinarily deep, and Small weed's growling over his "good, practicable grievances, as he called them, more than commonly funny. The absurdity of another man's grievance will sometimes make you forget your own important sore; and so the mess had become half good-natured again, when an orderly came up and handed the colonel a paper.

The melancholy Smallweed groaned. "Detail for picket duty, the 3d D. C. Volunteers; working party for the trenches, the 3d D. C. Volunteers,"" he affected to read from his empty plate.

The colonel's honest old phiz lighted up as he gave the orderly a receipt for the dispatch. "Boys," he cried, in a broad grin, "here's news! We're off for Fort Monroe in the morning!"

"For Fort Monroe!" chimed the mess.

"What for?" I ventured to ask.

66

Expedition. Don't say where. Whole corps going. Old Bulger's going, too, I suppose. Nice man to command an expedition! Dd glad to get out of this mud, boys, and that's

a fact."

"Where do you suppose we are going?" every one asked every

body else. Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and a dozen other places, were canvassed excitedly, and their merits as the possible objective points of a large expedition eagerly discussed by their respective partisans. The "deputy sawbones," as we used to call Dr. Cutts, leaned back so as to crack his campstool and nearly upset himself and the rickety table, and stretching his arms, yawned out complacently, "Gentlemen, you are all wrong."

Cries of "Hear, hear!" "Let's have it, Deputy Sawbones," "Go it, Young Pills," and the like.

"Well, gentlemen," the youth continues, unabashed, "I heard all about it a week ago, from a friend of mine in Washington."

Smallweed walked round the table with his cap over his eyes, and fell into an attitude, after the manner of Dan Bryant in a break-down.

The mess roared, and requested the doctor to "spit it out." "We are going to Texas."

MILITARY READING.

WE have been often and urgently applied to by officers of our Army to give them, through our pages, such information as would assist them in the selection and purchase of a suitable library of military books. We do not wonder at such applications; for never was an army composed to so large an extent of intelligent and educated men; and no duty could we perform with greater satisfaction than that of assisting such men in the choice of books. We shall proceed, therefore, at once to give the titles of a considerable number of military works of established character, with so much of accompanying remarks as may be necessary to make a list of titles of real practical value-after promising an introductory caveat or two to the reader.

First, it should be recollected, that the greater part of the books mentioned by us are such as are said technically to be "out of print"-that is, they are no longer in the hands of the original publishers, but belong to the stocks of "second-hand" dealers (or "antiquarians," as the Germans call them), who furnish themselves at the sales of private libraries and from similar sources. They cannot be purchased, therefore, like the publications of a Van Nostrand, by applying to the nearest bookseller one happens to know. They are not always secured even by sending the titles to a city bookseller; for he must order them from Europe at hap-hazard, trusting to his agent

there to look them up. The better way is, to put one's self into communication with one of those city booksellers who make it their special business to import books-not from existing publishers alone-but from the second-hand dealers of London, Paris, and Leipsic. These importers furnish themselves, by every steamer, with the current-priced catalogues of the foreign dealers, which they are ready to distribute to their customers by post, inviting orders from those catalogues. The order should name the catalogue, the number of the article, the title, and the price. The book will then be ordered from abroad, and-if secured-will be charged at rates fixed and published beforehand. It is in this way, and in this way alone, that all important collections of all other than current books are made.

In the second place, our list must embrace a large proportion of works not in the English language. This we regret; although we are aware that many of our officers (nay, privates) are liberally educated men; many of them know, or would readily acquire, French; and a considerable number are Germans by birth or extraction. But the truth is, the English have contributed comparatively little to military literature; they have resorted largely, as we must do, to their neighbors the French, who have long excelled in military learning and in clear, practical military writing. The German language, however, is not less rich in warlike books, original and translated. We shall, therefore, in many cases, give titles in all these languages, always naming English translations, when we are aware that they exist. But we do not find English dealers confining themselves exclusively to military works, as in France and Germany; and we cannot, therefore, report for the knowledge of titles to some one known London catalogue, as we can to those of Dumaine and Corréard for Paris.

And, finally, as we do not aim at giving even a skeleton-bibliography of the art of war, we shall omit all new and current American publications and all new text-books, however valuable, and shall aim at little other method than to let one book mentioned open another.

Books of a general character-such as, in some shape, cover a wide field in military literature-naturally come first. Were there any systematic bibliography of war, works in that line would take the precedence. The catalogue of the Library of the United States Military Academy, West Point, prepared in 1853, by (the then) Captain Coppée, now the editor of this Magazine, gives only one title: Doisy-Essai de bibliologie militaire. Paris, 1824, 8vo. Captain De La Barre Duparcq, of the St. Cyr Military School, is the author of a pamphlet: Des sources bibliographiques militaires. Paris, 1856; and Petzhold has a similar sketch in German: Uebersicht der ge