The Recollections of a Drummer-Boy(Civil War)/Google Books

Title The Recollections of a Drummer-Boy
Author Harry M. Kieffer
Published 1911
Here.
From the preface:"Several years ago the writer prepared a brief series of papers for the columns of St. Nicholas, under the title of "Recollections of a Drummer-Boy." It was thought that these sketches of army life, as seen by a boy, would prove enjoyable and profitable to children in general, and especially to the children of the men who participated in the great Civil War, on one side or the other; while the belief was entertained that they might at the same time serve to revive in the minds of the veterans themselves long-forgotten or but imperfectly remembered scenes and experiences in camp and field. In the outstart it was not the author's design to write a connected story, but rather simply to prepare a few brief and hasty sketches of army life, drawn from his own personal experience and suitable for magazine purposes. But these, though prepared in such intervals as could with difficulty be spared from the exacting duties of a busy professional life, having been so kindly received by the editors of St. Nicholas, as well as by the very large circle of readers of that excellent magazine, and the writer having been urgently pressed on all sides for more of the same kind, it was thought well to revise and enlarge the "Recollections of a Drummer-Boy," and to present them to the public in permanent book form. In the shape of a more or less connected story of army life, covering the whole period of a soldier's experience from enlistment to muster-out, and carried forward through all the stirring scenes of camp and field, it was believed that these "Recollections," in the revised form, would commend themselves not only to the children of the soldiers of the late war, but to the surviving soldiers themselves; while at the same time they would possess a reasonable interest for the general reader as well."