173                                HISTORY OF THE SEVENTY-EIGHTH REGIMENT O.V.V.I.

transforming itself into an army of the East, moved from sunset to sunrise, through a territory rich in all things wherein the theories of statisticians have declared it poor. Food in gardens, food in cellars, stock in fields, stock in barns, poultry everywhere, appeared in the distance, disappeared in the presence, and was borne away upon the knapsacks and bayonets of thousands of soldiers.

           A new El Dorado, too, was this heart of the South. Money – bright gold, shining silver – plucked from closets, and stockings, and burial places by the roadside, enriched the invaders. The soldier has his shims – the tail-feathers of peacocks drooped and scintillated along the moving columns, from the crests of infantrymen and troopers.

           Jokes, laughter and songs, and the tasting of the sweets of honey and sorghum, relieved the weary tramp, tramping over fields, roads and bridges. The cavalry swept the pathway of guerrillas; the clang of the hoofs and sabres resounded through the glens to right, to left and in the front. Swift and terrible, and not always just, were the strokes of their arms and the works of their hands. Pioneers along a march of desolation forty miles in width and three hundred in length, their labor was too swift to be discriminating.

           The great army – over the lands and into the dwellings of the poor and rich alike, through towns and cities – like a roaring wave, swept and paused, reveled and surged on. In the daytime the splendor, the toil, the desolation of the march; in the nighttime the brilliancy, the gloom, the music, the joy and slumber of the camp. Memorable the music that "mocked the moon" of November on the soil of Georgia; sometimes a triumphant march, sometimes a waltz, again an old air, stirring the heart alike to recollection and hope. Floating out of throats of brass to the ears of soldiers in their blankets and Generals in their tents, these tunes hallowed the eyes of all who listened. Sitting before his tent in the glow of a camp fire one evening, General Sherman let his cigar go out, to listen to an air that a distant band was playing. The General turned to one of his officers: "Send an orderly to ask that band to play that tune again." A little while and the band received the word. The tune was "The Blue Juniata," with exquisite variations. The band played it again, even more beautifully than before. Again it ceased, and then, off to the right, nearly a quarter of a mile away, the voices of some soldiers took it up with words. The band, and still another played a low accompaniment; camp after camp began singing; the music of "The Blue Juniata" became for a few minutes, the oratorio of half an army. Back along the whole wide pathway of this grand march, from border to coast, the eye catches glimpses of scenes whose poetic images an American, five years ago, would have thought never could have been revived from the romantic past. Pictures swarm in fields and glens, and by the banks of rivers. A halt at high noon beside a village, a besieging of houses by the troops, soldiers emerging from the doorways and backyards, bearing quilts, plates, poultry and pigs, beehives attacked, honey in the hands and smearing the faces of the boys, hundreds of soldiers poking hundreds of bayonets in the corners of yards and gardens, after concealed treasures; here and there a shining prize, and shouting and scrambling, and a merry division of the spoils. In the background, women with praying hands and beseeching lips unheeded. Night near a railroad depot – a roar of fires, a shouting of voices, thousands of men ripping up ties and rails, heating them, twisting them, casting them down, axes at work, the depot buildings and wood piles a blaze, a truly picturesque and tumultuous scene.

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