CVIII
HAVE just been up to see Mrs. Irene Stokes Wasley, and she had lots to tell me about you—so much she almost made me homesick. Mrs. Bailey came down on the boat Monday evening, and we catch a glimpse of her and the colonel parading. Dan. expresses the opinion that they are a mighty wee bit of a couple.
The other night, while I was on guard at Marston’s headquarters, we had a queer lot there under guard. There were fifteen men who said they had run away from Richmond to escape conscription. Some of them would not take the oath of allegiance, and it is said they will be returned to their friends—sent across and landed on the Virginia shore. They were mostly Irishmen and Jews, and it was the Irishmen who were willing to take the oath.
Now I must tell you of one of the meanest little skunks that ever lived. He is a brother of our second lieutenant. He is familiarly known as “Culpepper,” and the boys hate him devotedly. He is not enlisted, but ran away from the Reform School and came on with us. He is one of the most incorrigible little thieves that ever was. On the march through Maryland, while we were camped for a little while near Emmitsburg, he had a large sum of money which he pretended to have found in a box in a ditch, but which some of the boys now believe was stolen from the poor box of the convent there. Be that as it may, he has been engaged in two or three bad scrapes here which should furnish sufficient cause for having him arrested or sent home. His latest exploit was to crawl into the house of a man named Murphy, near the camp. He got in through a window, and Mrs. Murphy came in and caught him rummaging her bureau. She grabbed him, but he fought and scratched and bit until he got away, and now he is roaming around as big as ever, notwithstanding Mrs. Murphy declares several dollars in money are missing. The young scoundrel says he knocked a bag in at the window and climbed in to get it. His brother pretends to believe he is innocent, and shields him.
We are going in for improvements here, just as they do in other enterprising cities. A brick oven is being built which will take in a pile of beans, meat or bread. Bill Summers, our company cook, is the architect and mason; the next company’s cook is the tender. Clay is used for mortar, and where the bricks come from is one of the company secrets. Another job that it has taken all day to accomplish is the raising of a flag staff, eighty feet high, on the parade ground in front of the regiment.
Evening.—Dan. and I have just risen in our wrath and put an end to—well, I won’t try to tell how many millions of flies. By the judicious application of a couple of towels we wiped cartloads of them from the face of the earth. If any escaped to tell the tale, some fly historian will record August 26 as the fateful day when a wild Irishman and a crazy Yankee ran amuck at Point Lookout. Now Dan. is reading, in peace, an account of the operations at Charleston, the knocking to pieces of Fort Sumter, and wishing we could take the cussed city.