Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. THE PLEBE IN CAMP. ABOUT two weeks after I reported we were directed to prepare to go to Camp McPherson, a half mile or so from Barracks, out beyond the Cavalry plain, near old Fort Clinton. We were told just what articles to take for use in camp, and that we must put the balance of our effects in our trunks and carry them to the trunk rooms in the angle. We sorted out our camp articles, and each cadet made a bundle of his small things, and used a comforter or a blanket to hold them. D n, M s, and I, having arranged to tent together, we helped one another store away our trunks. When the call sounded to "fall in" we fell in with our bundles, brooms and buckets, and marched over to the camp. There were trees all around the camp site, with quite a grove at the guard tents. The tents were all pitched and they looked very pretty through the trees, with the trees and green parapet of Fort Clinton as a background, which could be seen over the tops of the white tents as we approached the camp. The tent cords were not fastened to pegs in the ground, but to pegs in cross- pieces supported upon posts about four feethigh, which brought the Company tents only four or five feet apart. All of the tents for cadets were wall tents, and each had a "fly" on it. There was a wooden floor, a gun rack, and a keyless locker (that is, a four-compartment long box), and a swinging pole hung about eighteen inches below the ridge pole of the tent, and nothing else in it. After the assignment, which, of course, was made according to rank, we proceeded to our respective tents, that were to be our homes till the 29th of August, the day to return to Barracks. The "Yearlings" and first classmen, too, began to take a greater interest in the plebes than ever. They were anxious to teach them h...