To the brave, true, and generous-hearted boys, my comrades and friends, of the Third Missouri Volunteers, who offered their lives for country in the cause of humanity....

BY Chaplain Robert T. Kerlin . 1898. HUDSON-KIMBERLY PUB. CO. KANSAS CITY, MO....

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

Much more remains for the historian, whoever he shall be, of the Third Regiment yet to relate, which things, some pleasant and forever memorable, some unpleasant and perhaps unforgettable, shall here not be so much as suggested. The writer's inclinations are all toward quietude and harmony; his limitations, besides, are imperative in forbidding. At Thoroughfare Gap he fell sick of a fever and was hors de combat during the subsequent encampment there and at Middletown, Pa. He has, therefore, been

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

It is reported in camp that the New Yorkers, the first night after our arrival and encampment near them, slept on their guns, with bayonets ready for defense. They supposed that of course we were cowboys and toughs, coming as we did from the Indian village at the mouth of the Kaw. As a matter of fact, however, the West, in the rural districts especially, is further removed from primitive condition than the East, whether that be New England or Virginia. These Virginia homesteads indeed are old; b

Huckleberries are ripe in the wilderness around Camp Alger, and many boys from Missouri are getting their first taste of the berry immortalized in the name of Tom Sawyer's adventurous friend. Dewberries also find many a nook in the woods and the fallow fields, where of mornings they gleam fresh and black on their low running vines. But most abundant of all are the blackberries. The vines were in blossom when we were at Jefferson Barracks, and we thought we should like to be there—if not at Porto

Last Saturday I received an interesting packet of letters from someone in St. Louis, who signed herself simply "R. S. M." The idea was so unique and feminine, and the letters gave so much amusement to the boys that I will tell you something about it. There were ten sealed envelopes in the packet accompanied by a note to myself, explaining the object to be to give a little amusement to the boys, and to help fill up a few minutes with "something unusual." Each letter bore a different address, some

[There has been considerable said about the mistreatment of volunteer soldiers now in the service of the government, and much of the talk of suffering and want in the camps has been discredited because of its seeming ridiculousness. Americans are not ready to believe that the heads of the departments would permit the brave men to undergo the trials and sufferings that have been so graphically pictured by the newspapers, and the more conservative here put these idle rumors aside as the work of se

For our Country, in these days, to go to war is a very significant event. In former times, for other nations, it meant not so much; the provocation needed not to involve such high and general interests. To be on the warpath, to plunder and be plundered, to kill and be killed is with the barbarian the usual thing. Of our own Teutonic ancestors this was true less, much less, than ten centuries ago; and it is very slow indeed that we have outgrown their barbaric, warlike propensity. Still, warfare,

April 27.—Enlistment at Kansas City, Mo. May 7.—Departure for Jefferson Barracks. May 8.—(Sunday) Day of work, fasting and prayer in Camp Stephens. May 14.—Muster into the United States service. May 26.—Departure for Falls Church, Virginia. May 29.—(Sunday) Arrival, erection of tents. June 28-30.—Practice—march to Difficult Run. July 24-August 4.—First Battalion, Major Kelsey, at Colvin Run, constructing rifle-range. August 3.—Departure for Thoroughfare Gap. August 3-4.—Burk Station. August 5-6.