She kicked about taking off her shoes and stockings, and said no gentleman would compel a lady to do that. I said I would wait about two minutes, and then, if it was too much trouble for her to take them off, I would come around the pulpit and help. Bless you, I wouldn't have gone for the world, as I was already more than satisfied with what I had found. She said I needn't trouble myself, as she guessed she could take off her shoes without my help. I heard her unlacing her shoes, and pretty soon two dainty shoes and two very long stockings, came over the pulpit, the heel of one shoe hitting me in the ear. As I picked up the shoes I heard the crumpling of a letter behind the pulpit, and I told her I must have all the messages she had. She said it was only a letter to one she loved. I told her I must have it, and she handed it over. I read, “My darling husband,” and handed it back, saying I would not pry into her family secrets. She began to cry, and insisted on my reading it, which I did. It was to her husband, an officer in the Confederate army, and was about as follows:
That letter knocked me out in one round. I had begun to enjoy the unpacking of the smuggled goods, and the discomfiture of my female smuggler, but when I read that loving letter, breathing such a Christian spirit, and thought of the poor wife-mother behind the pulpit unravelling herself, I was ashamed, and I said to myself, “she shall not take off another rag. So I handed back the letter and the dress, and all of the things she had taken off, and I said:
“Put everything right back onto yourself, and come out at your leisure, and we took the medicines and went out of the schoolhouse. Presently She came out, and I told her it was my duty to take her back to headquarters, but if she had no objections to my taking the letter to the general, with the medicines, she could go back to the house where she boarded, and I thought if she took the first boat for New Orleans, it would be all right, and I would see that the letter was sent through the lines to her husband. I helped her on her horse, and I said:
“You can escape. Your horse is better than ours, and though you are a prisoner, we would not shoot at you if you tried to escape. I hope your prayers will have the effect you desire, and that the trouble will soon be over. I hope you will and the children well, and that the husband will be spared to be a comfort to you.”
She bowed her head, as she sat in the saddle, and the look of defiance which she had shown, was gone, and one of thankfulness, peace, hope, purity, took its place. She handed me the letter, and asked:
“Can I go?”
I told, her she was free to go. She turned her horse; towards town, touched him with the whip, and he was; away like the wind. I stood for two minutes, watching her, when I was recalled to my senses by the Irishman, who said:
“Fhat are we to do wid the quinane and the gun caps?” We packed the smuggled goods in our saddle-bags and elsewhere, and rode back to headquarters. The colonel and the general were in the colonel's tent, and I took the “stuff” in and reported all the occurrences.
“But where is the lady?” inquired the general, after reading the letter and wiping his eyes.
“As we were about to start back,” said I, “after taking the smuggled goods from her, she gave her horse the whip, and rode away. I had no orders to shoot a woman, and I let her go.”
“Thank God,” said the general. “That's the best way,” said the colonel. “She will quit smuggling and go to her children.”
It was not twenty-four hours before the news spread all over my regiment, as well as several other regiments, that a certain corporal had captured a female smuggler, while on picket, had searched her on the spot and found a large quantity of quinine and other articles contraband of war, and there was a general desire to look upon the features of a man, not a commissioned officer who had gall enough to search a female rebel, from top to toe, without orders from the commanding officer, and I was constantly being visited by curiosity-seekers, who wanted to know all about it. Of course it was not known that I had been ordered to do as I did, and they all wondered why I was not made an example of; and many privates, corporals and sergeants wondered if they would get out of it so easily if they should do as I did. There were a great many women passing through the lines, and I am sure many soldiers decided that the first woman who attempted to pass through would get searched. It was talked among the men, and for a day or two a lady would certainly have stood a poor show to have rode up to a picket post with a pass to go outside. The soldiers had so long been away from female society that it would have been a picnic for them to have captured a suspicious looking woman who was pretty. I was pointed out, down town, as the man who captured the woman loaded with quinine, and women with rebel tendencies would look at me as though I was a bold, bad man that ought to be killed, and they acted as though they would like to eat me. But I tried to appear modest, and not as though I had done anything I was particularly proud of. The next evening the colonel sent for me and said he had got something for me to do that required nerve. I told him that my experience in putting down the rebellion had shown me that the whole thing required nerve. That I had been on my nerve until my nerves were pretty near used up, and I asked him if he couldn't let some of the other boys do a little of the nervous work. He said he had one more woman job that he would like to have me undertake.
I was sick of the whole woman business, and told him I did not want to be aggravated any more; that arresting women and searching them, was nothing but an aggravation, and I wanted to be let out. He said in this case I would not have to arrest anybody of the female persuasion, but that I would have to be arrested, and that it would be the greatest joke that ever was. I told him if there was any joke about it he could count me in. Then he went on to say that my success with the female smuggler had excited all the boys to emulate my deeds, and they were all laying for a female smuggler, and that he feared it wouldn't be safe for a woman to be caught on the picket line. There had got to be a stop put to it, and he and the general had thought of a scheme. He said there was a corporal in one of the companies who had made his brags that he would arrest the first female that came to his picket post, and search her for smuggled goods, and they wanted to make an example of him. He asked me if I wasn't something of a boxer, and I told him for a light weight I was considered pretty good. Then he asked me if I could ride on a side saddle. I told him I could ride anything, from a hobby to an elephant. He said that was all right, and I would fill the bill. Then he went into details. I was to go to the town with him, and be fitted out with a riding habit of the female persuasion, false hair, side saddle, and a bustle as big as a bushel basket. That I was to ride out on a certain road, where the corporal would be on picket with two men. He would stop me, and search me, I was to cry, and beg, and all that, but finally submit to be searched, and after the corporal had got started to search me, I was to haul off and give him one “biff” in the nose, another if it was necessary to knock him down, paste one of the men in the ear, if he showed any impudence, jump on my horse and come back to town, and leave the corporal to find his mistake.
I didn't half like the idea of dressing up in such a masquering costume, but of course if I could help put down the rebellion that way, it was my duty to do it, and besides, I had a grudge against that corporal, anyway, because he called me a “jay” and a “substitute,” and a “drafted man,” when I came to the regiment. The colonel took me to the residence of a lady friend who rode on horseback a good deal, and as he let her into the secret, she helped fix me up. All I had to do was to remove my cavalry jacket, and she put the dress on over my head. I always supposed they put on these dresses the same as men put on pants, by walking into them feet first, but she said they went over the head. I felt as though my pants were going to show, but she gave me some instructions about keeping the dress down, and I began to feel a good deal like a woman. The dress fit me around the waist as though it was made for me, and when it was all buttoned up in front I felt stunning. She and the colonel made a bustle out of newspapers, and a small sofa cushion of eider down was placed where it would do the most good. After the dress was all fixed, she got a wig and put it on my head, and a hat, with a feather in it, and then pinned a veil on the hair, so it reached down to my rose-bud mouth. Then she took a powder arrangement and powdered my face, put on a pair of long gauntlets which she usually wore, and told me to look in the glass. When I looked into the glass I almost fainted. The deception was so good that it would have fooled the oldest man in the world.
The colonel said he was almost inclined to fall in love with me himself, and he did put his arm around me and squeeze me, but I didn't notice any particular feeling, such as I did when his lady friend was fooling around me. That was different. Well, I was an inveterate smoker at that time, so I took my pipe and a bag of tobacco, and put it in a pocket of the dress, and some matches, and we went out doors. The colonel took my tiny number eight boot in his hand and tossed me lightly into the saddle, then he mounted his own horse and we rode around the suburbs of the town, so I could get used to the side-saddle. I got him to stop behind a fence and let me have a smoke out of my pipe, and then I told him I was ready. He gave me a pass, and told me to go out on the road the corporal was on, and if he let me pass out of the lines to go on to a turn in the road, where a squad of our men were on a scout, and to report to the officer in charge, who would bring me in all right, by another road, but if the corporal attempted to search me, to do as I had been told to do. After I had knocked the corporal down, if I would give a yell, the officer who was outside would come and arrest us all and bring us to headquarters, where the colonel could reprimand the corporal, etc. I threw a kiss to the colonel and started out on the road. It was about a mile to the picket post, and I had time to reflect on my position. This was putting down the rebellion at a great rate. I was an ostensible female, liable to be insulted at any moment, but I would maintain the dignity of my alleged sex if I didn't lay up a cent. I put on a proud, haughty look, full of purity and all that, and as I neared the picket post, I saw the corporal step out into the road, and as I came up he told me to halt. I halted, and handed him my pass, but he said it was a forgery, and ordered me to dismount. I turned on the water, from my eyes, and began to cry, but it run off the bad corporal like water off a duck.
“None of your sniveling around me,” said the vile man. “Get down off that horse.”
“Sir,” I said, with well feigned indignation, “you would not molest a poor girl who has no one to defend her. Let me go I prithe.”
I had read that, “Let me go I prithe,” in a novel, and it seemed to me to be the proper thing to say, though I couldn't hardly keep from laughing.
“Prithe nothing,” said the corporal. “What you got in that bustle?” said the corporal.
“Bustle,” I said, blushing so you could have touched a match to my face. “Why speak of such a thing in the presence of a lady. I want you to let me go or I shall think you are real mean, so now. Please, Mr. Soldier, let me go,” and I smiled at him and winked with my left eye in a manner that ought to have paralyzed a marble statue. “O, what you giving us,” said the vile man. “Get down off that horse and let me go through you for quinine. Do you hear?”
I was afraid if he helped me down he would see my boots or pants, which would be a give-away. So I gathered my dress in my hands and jumped down in pretty good shape. I had sparred with the corporal several times in camp, and I knew I could knock him out easy, and I made up my mind that the first indignity he offered me I would just “lam him one. It was all I could do to keep from pasting him in the nose, when I first landed on the ground, but I had a part to play, and it would not do to go off half cocked. So I looked sad, pouted my lips, and wondered if he would kiss me, and feel the beard where I had been shaved.
“Now, shuck yourself,” said he.
“Do what? I asked, with apparent alarm.
“Peel,” said he, as he put his hand on my back,
“Sir,” I said with my eyes flashing fire, and my heart throbbing, and almost bursting with suppressed laughter, “you are insolent. I am a poor orphan, unused to contact with coarse men. I have been raised a pet, and no vile hand has ever been laid upon me until you just touched me. If you touch me I shall scream. I shall call for help. What would you do, you wicked, naughty man.”
“Unbutton,” said he as he pointed to my dress in front. “Call for help and be darned. You are a smuggler, and I know it.”
“O, my God,” said I, with a stage accent, “has it come to this? Am I to be robbed of all I hold dear, by a common Yankee corporal. Has a woman no rights which are to be respected? Am I to be murdered in cold bel-lud, with all my sins upon my head. O, Mr. Man, give me a moment to utter a silent prayer.”
“O, hush,” said he, “and hold up your hands. There ain't going to be any bel-lud. All I want is to go through you for quinine.”
“Spare me, I beseech you,” I said, as I held up my hands, and got in position to knock him silly the first move he made. “I am no walking drug store, I am a good girl.” Around my awful form I draw an imaginary circle. “Step but one foot within that sacred circle, and on thy head I launch the cu-r-r-r-se of Rome, Georgia.”
“Let up on this Shakespeare, and get to busiess, said the corporal, as he reached up to my neck to unbutton the top button of my dress. He was looking at my dress, and wondering what he would find concealed within, when I brought down both fists and took him with one in each eye, with a force that would have knocked a mule down. He fell backwards, and gave a yell that could have been heard a mile. Then one of his men started for me and I knocked him in the ear, and he fell beside the corporal. The other man was going to come for his share, when the officer who had been stationed outside the lines rode up with his men and asked what was the matter. The soldier-who was not hit said I had assassinated the corporal. The officer said that was wrong, and women who would go around killing off the Union army with their fists ought to be arrested. Just then the corporal raised up on his elbow and tried to open two of the blackest eyes that ever were seen. Turning to the officer, he said:
“That woman is a smuggler, and she struck me with a brick house!
“Ancient female,” said the officer, looking at me and laughing, “why do you go around like a besum of destruction, wiping out armies, one man at a time. You ought to be ashamed of myself, and you should be muzzled.
“Don't call me a female,” said I, in my natural hoarse voice. “That is something that I will not submit to.”
The corporal looked up at me with one eye, the other being almost closed from the effects of the fall of the brick house. He looked as though he smelled woolen burning, as the old saying is. The officer said he guessed he would take us all to headquarters, and inquire into the affair. The corporal said that there was nothing to inquire into. That this female came along and insisted on going outside of the lines, and when he asked her, in a polite manner, to show her pass, she struck him down with a billy, or some weapon she had concealed about her person.
“You are not much of a liar, either,” said I, jumping on to my horse astraddle, like a man.
The corporal looked at me as though he would sink, but he maintained that he had done nothing that should offend the most fastidious female. The corporal and his men mounted, and we all started for headquarters. I rode beside the officer, and the corporal was right behind me. After we had got started I pulled out my pipe, filled it, lit a match as soldiers usually do, though it was quite unhandy, and began to smoke. As the tobacco smoke rolled out under my veil, from the alleged rosebud mouth, the scene was one that the corporal and the most of the men had never thought of, though the officer was “on” all right enough. The corporal could hardly believe his eyes, or one eye, for the other one had gone closed. I was a fine enough looking female as we rode through the regiment, except the pipe, which I puffed along just as though I had no dress on. As we rode up to the colonel's tent, it was noised around that a scout had captured a daring female rebel, and she had almost killed a corporal, and the whole regiment gathered around the colonel's tent.
“What is the trouble, corporal?” asked the colonel of my black-eyed friend.
“Well this woman wanted to go outside, and when I objected, she knocked me down with a rail off a fence.”
“And you offered her no indignity?” the colonel asked.
“Not in the least,” said the corporal.
Then the colonel asked me to tell my story, which I did. The corporal said it was a lie, but the other man, whom I did not hit, said I was right.
“Can you disrobe, before these soldiers, without getting off your horse?” asked the colonel, looking at me.
I told him I could and he told me to proceed. I pulled the hat and hair off first and appeared with my red hair clipped short. I then I threw the dress over my head, and appeared in my cavalry pants, all dressed, except my jacket and cap, which the colonel handed me, having brought it from the house where I put on the dress. I put on the jacket, wiped the powder off my face, and the corporal said:
“It's that condemned raw recruit.”
All the boys took in the transformation scene, and then the colonel told them that he wanted this to be a lesson to all of them, to let all women who came to the picket posts, or anywhere, who had passes, alone, and not think because one woman had been caught smuggling, that all women were smugglers. In fact he wanted every soldier to mind his own business. Then he dismissed us, and we went to our quarters. On the way, the one-eyed corporal touched me on the arm, and he said:
“Old man, you played it fine on me, but I will get even with you yet.”
About this time I received the greatest shock of the whole war. I had prided myself upon my uniform that I brought from home, which was made by a tailor, and fit me first rate. It was of as good cloth and as well made as the uniforms of any of the officers, and I was not ashamed to go out with a party of officers on a little evening tear, because there was nothing about my uniform to distinguish me from an officer, except the shoulder-straps, and many officers did not wear shoulder-straps at all, except on dress parade or inspection. I took great pleasure in riding around town, wherever the regiment was located, looking wise, and posing as an officer. But the time came when my uniform, which came with me as a recruit, became seedy, and badly worn, and it was necessary to discard it, and draw some clothing of the quartermaster. That is a trying time for a recruit. One day it was announced that the quartermaster sergeant had received a quantity of clothing, and the men were ordered to go and draw coats, pants, hats, shoes, overcoats, and underclothing, as winter was coming on, and the regiment was liable to move at any time. Something happened that I was unable to be present the first forenoon that clothing was issued, and, when I did call upon the quartermaster-sergeant, there was only two or three suits left, and they had been tumbled over till they looked bad. I can remember now how my heart sank within me, as I picked up a pair of pants that was left. They were evidently cut out with a buzz-saw, and were made for a man that weighed three hundred. I held them up in installments, and looked at them. Holding them by the top, as high as I could, and the bottom of the legs of the pants laid on the ground. The sergeant charged the pants to my account, and then handed me a jacket, a small one, evidently made for a hump-backed dwarf. The jacket was covered with yellow braid. O, so yellow, that it made me sick. The jacket was charged to me, also. Then he handed me some undershirts and drawers, so coarse and rough that it seemed to me they must have been made of rope, and lined with sand-paper. Then came an overcoat, big enough for an equestrian statue of George Washington, with a cape on it as big as a wall tent. The hat I drew was a stiff, cheap, shoddy hat, as high as a tin camp kettle, which was to take the place of my nobby, soft felt hat that I had paid five dollars of my bounty money for. The hat was four sizes too large for me. Then I took the last pair of army shoes there was, and they weighed as much as a pair of anvils, and had raw-hide strings to fasten them with. Has any old soldier of the army ever forgotten the clothing that he drew from the quartermaster? These inverted pots for hats, the same size all the way up, and the shoes that seemed to be made of sole leather, and which scraped the skin off the ankles. O, if this government ever does go to Gehenna, as some people contend it will, sometime, it will be as a penalty for issuing such ill-fitting shoddy clothing to its brave soldiers, who never did the government any harm. I carried the lot of clothing to my tent, feeling sick and faint. The idea of wearing them among folks was almost more than I could bear to think of. I laid them on my bunk, and looked at them, and “died right there.” That hat was of a style older than Methuselah. O, I could have stood it, all but the hat, and pants, and shoes, but they killed me. While I was looking at the lay-out, and trying to make myself believe that my old clothes that I brought with me were good enough to last till the war was over, though the seat of the pants, and the knees, and the sleeves of the coat were nearly gone, an orderly came through the company and said the regiment would have a dismounted dress parade at sundown, and every man must wear his new clothes. Ye gods! that was too much! If I could have had a week or ten days to get used to those new clothes, one article at a time, I could have stood it, but to be compelled to put the pants, and jacket, shoes and hat on all at once, was horrible to think of, and if I had not known that a deserter was always caught, and punished, I would have deserted. But the clothes must be put on, and I must go out into the world a spectacle to behold. Believing that it is better to face the worst, and have it over, I put on the pants first. If I could ever meet the army contractor who furnished those pants to a government almost in the throes of dissolution, I would kill him as I would an enemy of the human race. There was room enough in those pants for a man and a horse. Yes, and a bale of hay. There were no suspenders furnished to the men, and how to keep the pants from falling from grace was a question, but I got a piece of tent rope, cut a hole in the waist band, and run the rope around inside, and tied it around my waist, puckering the top of the pants at proper intervals.
When I think of those pants now, after twenty-two years, I wonder that I was not irretrievably lost in them. I would have been lost if I had not stuck out of the top. But when I looked at the bottoms of the pants I found at least a foot too much. If I had tied the rope around under my arms, or buttoned them to my collar button, they would have been too long at the bottom. I finally rolled them up at the bottom, and they rolled clear up above my knees. But how they did bag around my body. There was cloth enough to spare to have made a whole uniform for the largest man in the regiment. At that time I was a slim fellow, that weighed less than 125 pounds, and there is no doubt I got the largest pair of pants that was issued in the whole Union army. I only had a-small round mirror in my tent, so I could not see how awfully I looked, only in installments, but to a sensitive young man who had always dressed well, any one can see how a pair of such pants would harrow up his soul. If the pants were too large, you ought to have seen the jacket. The contractor who made the clothes evidently took the measure of a monkey to make that jacket. It was so small that I could hardly get it on. The sleeves were so tight that the vaccination marks on my arm must have shown plainly. The sleeves were too short, and my hands and half of my forearm riding outside. The body was so tight that I had to use a monkey-wrench to button it, and then I couldn't breathe without unbuttoning one button. It was so tight that my ribs showed so plain they could be counted.
I stuffed some pieces of grain sack in the shoes, and got them on, and tied them, put on that awful hat, the bugle sounded to fall in, and I fell out of my tent towards the place of assembly, with my carbine. If we had been going out mounted, I could have managed to hide some of the pants around the saddle, if I could have got my shoe over the horse's back, but to walk out among men, stubbing my shoes against each other, and interfering and knocking my ankles off, was pretty hard. The company was about formed when I fell out of my tent, and when the men saw me they snickered right out. I have heard a great many noises in my time that took the life out of me.
The first shell that I heard whistle through the air, and shriek, and explode, caused my hair to raise, and I was cold all up and down my spine. The first flock of minnie bullets that sang about my vicinity caused my flesh to creep and my heart's blood to stand still. Once I was near a saw mill when the boiler exploded, and as the pieces of boiler began to rain around me, I felt how weak and insignificant a small, red-headed, freckled-faced man is. Once I heard a girl say “no,” when I had asked her a civil question, and I was so pale and weak that I could hardly reply that I didn't care a continental whether she married me or not, but I never felt quite so weak, and powerless, and ashamed, and desperate as I did when I came out, falling over myself and the men of my company snickered at my appearance. The captain held his hand over his face and laughed. I fell in at the left of my company, and the captain went to the right and looked down the line, and seeing my pants out in front about a foot, he ordered me to stand back. I stood back, and he looked at the rear of the line, and I stuck out worse behind, and he made me move up. Finally he came down to where I was and told me to throw out my chest. I tried to throw it out, and busted a button off, but the pressure was too great, and my chest went back. Finally the captain told me I could go to the right of the company and act as orderly sergeant on dress parade. He said as our company was on the right of the regiment, they could dress on my pants, and I wouldn't be noticed.
What I ought to have done, was to have committed suicide right there, but I went to the right, trying to look innocent, and we moved off to the field for dress parade. Everything went on well enough, except that in coming to a “carry arms,” with my carbine, from a present, the muzzle of the carbine knocked off my stiff hat, and the stock of the carbine went into the pocket of my pants and run clear down my leg, before I could rescue it. A file closer behind me picked up my hat and put it on me, with the yellow cord tassels in front, and before I could fix it, the order came, “First sergeants to the front and center, march.” Those who are familiar with military matters, know that at dress parade the first sergeants march a few paces to the front, then turn and march to the center of the regiment, turn and face the adjutant, and each salutes that officer in turn, and reports, “Co. ——, all present or accounted for.” That was the hardest march I ever had in all of my army experience. I knew that every eye of every soldier in the six companies at the right of the regiment, would be on my pants, and the officers would laugh at me, and the several hundred ladies and gentlemen from town, who were back of the colonel, witnessing the dress parade, would laugh, too. A man can face death, in the discharge of his duty, better than he can face the laughter of a thousand people. I seemed to be the only soldier in the whole regiment who had not got a pretty good fit in drawing his new clothes, but I was a spectacle. As I marched to the front, with the other eleven first sergeants, and stood still for them to dress on me, I felt as though the piece of tent rope with which I had fastened my large pants up, was becoming untied, and I began to perspire. What would become of me if that rope should become untied? If that rope gave way, it seemed to me it would break up the whole army, stampede the visitors, and cause me to be court-martialed for conduct unbecoming any white man. I made up my mind if the worst came, I would drop my carbine and grab the pants with both hands, and save the day. At the command, right and left face, I turned to the left, and I could feel the pants begin to droop, as it were, so I took hold of the top of them with my left hand, and at the command, march, I started for the center.
I had got almost past my own company, and there had been no general laugh, but when I passed an Irishman, named Mulcahy, I heard him whisper out loud to the man next to him, “Howly Jasus, luk at the pants.” Then there was a snicker all through the company, which was taken up by the next, and by the time I got to the center, and “front faced,” a half of the regiment were laughing, and the officers were scolding the men and whispering to them to shut up. Just then I felt that the one hand that was trying to hold the pants up, was never going to do the work in the world, so I dropped my carbine behind me, said, “Co. E, all present or accounted for,” and stood there like a stoughton bottle, holding the waist-band of those pants with both hands, as pale as a ghost. I could see that the adjutant and the colonel and two majors, were laughing, and many of the visitors were trying to keep from laughing. I think I lived seventy years in five minutes, while the other eleven orderlies were reporting, and when the order came to return to our posts, I whispered to the next orderly to me, and told him if he would pick up my carbine and bring it along, I would die for him, and he picked it up. The dress parade was soon finished, but instead of marching the companies back to their quarters, they were ordered to break ranks on the parade ground, and for an hour I was surrounded with officers and men, who laughed at me till I thought I would die.
The colonel and adjutant finally told me that it was a put up job on me, to make a little fun for the boys. They said I had often had fun at the expense of the other boys, and they wanted to see if I could stand a joke on myself, and they admitted that I had done it well. If I had known it was a joke, I could have lived through it better. The adjutant said he had got a little work for me that evening, and the next morning I could take my clothes down town to the post quartermaster, and exchange them for a suit that would fit me. I went to his tent, and he showed me a lot of company reports, and wanted me to make out a consolidated monthly report, for the assistant adjutant general of the brigade. I had done some work for him before, and he left a blank signed by himself and colonel, and told me to make out a report and send it to the brigade headquarters, as he was going down town with a party of officers. I made up my mind that I would get even with the adjutant and the colonel, so I took a pen and filled out the blank. My idea was to put all the figures in the wrong column, which I did, and send it to the brigade headquarters. The next morning I went down town with the quartermaster, and got a suit of clothes to fit me, and on the way back to camp I passed brigade headquarters, when I saw our adjutant looking quite dejected. He called to me and said he had been summoned to brigade headquarters to explain some inaccuracies in the monthly report sent in the night before, and he wanted me to stay and see what was the trouble, but I acted as though if there was a mistake, it was an error of the head rather than of the feet. Pretty soon the old brigade adjutant, who was a strict diciplinarian, and a man who never heard of a joke, came in from the general's tent, with his brow corrugated. They had evidently been brooding over the report.
“I beg your pardon, adjutant,” said he, with a preoccupied look, “but in your report I observe that your regiment contains forty-three enlisted men, and nine hundred and twenty-six company cooks. This seems to me improbable, and the general cannot seem to understand it.”
The adjutant turned red in the face, and was about to stammer out something, when the adjutant general continued:
“Again, we observe that your quartermaster has on hand nine hundred bales of condition powders, which is placed in your report as rations for the men, that you only have eleven horses in your regiment fit for duty, that you have the same number of men, while the commissioned officers foot up at nine hundred and twenty-six. Of your sick men there seems to be plenty, some eight hundred, which would indicate an epidemic, of which these headquarters had not been informed previously. In the column headed “officers detailed on other duty” I find four “six-mule teams,” and one “spike team of five mules.” In the column “officers absent without leave” I find the entry “all gone off on a drunk.” This, sir, is the most incongruous report that has ever been received at these head-quarters, from a reputably sober officer. Can this affair be satisfactorily explained, at once, or would you prefer to explain it to a court-martial?”
“Captain,” said the adjutant in distress, and perspiring freely, “my clerk has made a mistake, and placed a piece of waste paper that has been scribbled on, in the envelope, instead of the regular report. Let me take it, and I will send the proper report to you in ten minutes.”
The adjutant general handed over my report, after asking how it happened that the signature of the colonel and adjutant was on the ridiculous report, and the adjutant and the red-headed recruit went out, mounted and rode away. On the way the adjutant said, “I ought to kill you on the spot. But I wont. You have only retaliated on us for playing them pants on you. I hate a man that can't take a joke.”
Then we made out a new report, and I took it to headquarters, and all was well. But the adjutant was not as kitteny with his jokes on the other fellows for many moons.
Up to this time I had never been sick a day in my life, that is, sick enough to ache and groan and grunt, and lay in bed. At home I had occasionally had a cold, and I was put to bed at night, after drinking a quart of ginger tea, and covered up with blankets in a warm room, and I was fussed over by loving hands until I got to sleep, and in the morning I would wake up as fresh as a daisy, with my cold all gone. Once or twice at home I had a bilious attack that lasted me almost twenty-four hours; but the old family doctor fired blue pills down me, and I came under the wire an easy winner. I did have the mumps and the measles, of course before enlisting, but the loving care I was given brought me out all right, and I looked upon those little sicknesses as a sort of luxury. The people at home would do everything to make sick experiences far from bitter memories. It was getting along towards Christmas of my first year in the army, and though it was the Sunny South we were in, I noticed that it was pretty all-fired cold. The night rides were full of fog and malaria; and one morning I came in from an all-night ride through the woods and swamps, feeling pretty blue. The mud around my tent was frozen, and there was a little snow around in spots. As I laid down in my bunk to take a snooze before breakfast, I noticed how awfully thin an army blanket was. It was good enough for summer, but when winter came the blanket seemed to have lost its cunning. I was again doing duty as a private soldier, having learned that my promotion to the position of corporal was only temporary. I had been what is called a “lance corpora,” or a brevet corporal. It seemed hard, after tasting of the sweets of official position, to be returned to the ranks, but I had to take the bitter with the sweet, and a soldier must not kick. I had never laid down to sleep before without dropping off into the land of dreams right away, but now, though I was tired enough, my eyes were wide open and I felt strange. At times I would be so hot that I would throw the blanket off, and then I would be so cold that it seemed as though I would freeze. I had taken a severe cold which had settled everywhere, and there was not a bone in my body but what ached; my lungs seemed of no use; I could not take a long breath without a hacking cough, and I felt as though I should die. It was then that I thought of the warm little room at home and the ginger tea, and the soaking of my feet in mustard water and wrapping my body in a soft flannel blanket, and the kindly faces of my parents, my sister, my wife—everybody that had been kind to me. I would close my eyes and imagine I could see them all, and open my eyes and see my cold little tent and shiver as I thought of being sick away from home. I laid for an hour wishing I was home again; and while alone there I made up my mind I would write home and warn all the boys I knew against enlisting. The thought that I should die there alone was too much, and I was about to yell for help when my tent mate, who had been on a scout, came in. He was a big green Yankee, who had a heart in him as big as a water pail, but he wasn't much, of a nurse. He came in nearly frozen, threw his saddle down in a corner, took out a hard tack and began to chew it, occasionally taking a drink of water out of a canteen. That was his breakfast.
“Well, I've got just about enough of war,” said he, as he picked his teeth with a splinter off his bunk, and filled his pipe and lit it. “They can't wind up this business any too soon to suit the old man. War in the summer is a picnic, but in winter it is wearin on the soldier.”
Heretofore I had enjoyed tobacco smoke very much, both from my own pipe and Jim's, but when he blew out the first whiff of smoke it went to my head and stomach and all up and down me, and I yelled, in a hoarse, pneumonia sort of voice:
“Jim, for God's sake don't smoke. I am at death's door, and I don't want to smell of tobacco smoke when St. Peter opens the gate.”
“What, pard, you ain't sick,” said Jim, putting his pipe outside of the tent, and coming to me and putting his great big hand on my forehead, as tender as a woman.
“Great heavens! you have got the yellow fever. You won't live an hour.”
That was where Jim failed as a nurse. He made things out worse than they were. He, poor old fellow, thought it was sympathy, and if I had let him go on he would have had me dead before night. I told him I was all right. All I had was a severe cold, on my lungs, and pneumonia, and rheumatism, and chills and fever, and a few such things, but I would be all right in a day or two. I wanted to encourage Jim to think I was not very bad off, but he wouldn't have it. He insisted that I had typhoid fever, and glanders, and cholera. He went right out of the tent and called in the first man he met, who proved to be the horse doctor. The horse doctor was a friend of mine, and a mighty good fellow, but I had never meditated having him called in to doctor me. However, he felt of my fore leg, looked at my eyes, rubbed the hair the wrong way on my head, and told Jim to bleed me in the mouth, and blanket me, and give me a bran mash, and rub some mustang liniment on my chest and back. I didn't want to hurt the horse doctor's feelings by going back on his directions, but I told him I only wanted to soak my feet in mustard water, and take some ginger tea. He said all right, if I knew more about it than he did, and that he said he would skirmish around for some ginger, while Jim raised the mustard, and they both went out and left me alone. It seemed an age before anybody come, and I thought of home all the time, and of the folks who would know just what to do if I was there. Pretty soon Jim came in with a camp kettle half full of hot water, and a bottle of French mixed mustard which he had bought of the sutler. I told him I wanted plain ground mustard, but he said there wasn't any to be found, and French mustard was the best he could do. We tried to dissolve it in the water, but it wouldn't work, and finally Jim suggested that he take a mustard spoon and plaster the French mustard all over my feet, and then put them to soak that way. He said that prepared mustard was the finest kind for pigs feet and sausage, and he didn't know why it was not all right to soak feet in. So he plastered it on and I proceeded to soak my feet. I presume it was the most unsuccessful case of soaking feet on record. The old camp kettle was greasy, and when the hot water and French mustard began to get in their work on the kettle, the odor was sickening, and I do not think I was improved at all in my condition. I told Jim I guessed I would lay down and wait for the ginger tea. Pretty soon the horse doctor came in with a tin cup full of hot ginger tea. I took one swallow of it and I thought I had swallowed a blacksmith's forge, with a coal fire in it. I gasped and tried to yell murder. The horse doctor explained that he couldn't get any ginger, so he had taken cayenne pepper, which, he added, could knock the socks off of ginger any day in the week. I felt like murdering the horse doctor, and I felt a little hard at Jim for playing French mustard on me, but when I come to reflect, I could see that they had done the best they could, and I thanked them, and told them to leave me alone and I would go to sleep. They went out of the tent and I could hear them speculating on my case. Jim said he knew I had diabetis, and lung fever combined, with sciatic rheumatism, and brain fever, and if I lived till morning the horse doctor could take it out of his wages. The horse doctor admitted that my case had a hopeless look, but he once had a patient, a bay horse, sixteen hands high, and as fine a saddle horse as a man ever threw a leg over, that was troubled exactly the same as I was. He blistered his chest, gave him a table-spoonful of condition powders three times a day in a bran mash, took off his shoes and turned him out to grass, and in a week he sold him for two hundred and fifty dollar. I laid there and tried to go to sleep listening to that talk. Then, some of the boys who had heard that I was sick, came along and inquired how I was, and I listened to the remarks they made. One of them wanted to go and get some burdock leaves, and pound them into a pulp, and bind them on me for a poultice. He said he had an aunt in Wisconsin who had a milk sickness, and her left leg swelled up as big as a post, and the doctors tried everything, and charged her over two hundred dollars, and never did her any good, and one day an Indian doctor came along and picked some burdock leaves and fixed a poultice for her, and in a week she went to a hop-picker's dance, and was as kitteny as anybody, and the Indian doctor only charged her a quarter. Jim was for going out for burdock leaves at once, for me, but the horse doctor told him I didn't have no milk sickness. He said all the milk soldiers got was condensed milk, and mighty little of that, and he would defy the world to show that a man could get milk sickness on condensed milk. That seemed to settle the burdock remedy, and they went to inquiring of Jim if he knew where my folks lived, so he could notify them, in case I was not there in the morning. Jim couldn't remember whether it was Atchison, Kan., or Fort Atkinson, Wis., but he said he would go and ask me, while I was alive, so there would be no mistake, and the poor fellow, meaning as well as any man ever did, came in and asked for the address of my father, saying it was of no account, particularly, only he wanted to know. I gave him the address, and then he asked me if he shouldn't get me something to eat. I told him I couldn't eat anything to save me. He offered to fry me some bacon, and make me a cup of coffee, but the thought of bacon and coffee made me wild. I told him if he could make me a nice cup of green tea, and some milk toast, or poach me an egg and place it on a piece of nice buttered toast, and give me a little currant jelly, I thought I could swallow a mouthful. Jim's eyes stuck out when I gave my order, which I had done while thinking of home, and a tear rolled down his cheek, and he went out of the tent, saying, “All right, pard.” I saw him tap his forehead with his finger, point his thumb toward the tent, and say to the boys outside:
“He's got 'em! Head all wrong! Wants me to make him milk toast, poached eggs, green tea, and currant jelly. And I offered him bacon. Sow belly for a sick man! There isn't a loaf of bread in camp. Not an egg within five miles. And milk! currant jelly! Why, he might as well ask for Delmonico's bill of fare, but we have got to get 'em. I told him he should have em, and, by mighty! he shall. Here, Mr. Horse-doctor, you stay and watch him, and I and Company D here will saddle up and go out on the road to a plantation, and raid it for delicacies.
“You bet your life,” says the Company “D” man, and pretty soon I heard a couple of saddles thrown on two horses, and then there was a clatter of horses feet on the frozen ground. I have thought of it since a good many times, and have concluded that I must have dropped asleep. Any way, it didn't seem more than five minutes before the tent nap opened and Jim came in.
“Come, straighten out here, now, you red-headed corpse, and try that toast,” said he, as he came in with a piece of hard-tack box for a tray, and on it was a nice china plate, and a cup and saucer, an egg on toast, and a little pitcher of milk, and some jelly.
“Jim,” I said, tasting of the tea, which was not much like army tea, “you never made this tea. A woman made that tea, or I'm a goat. And that toast was toasted by a woman, and that egg was poached by a woman. Where am I?” I asked, imagining that I was home again.
“You guessed it the first time, pard,” said Jim, as he threw the blanket over my shoulders, as I sat up on the bunk to try and eat. “The whole thing was done by the rebel angel.”
“Rebel angel, Jim; what are you talking about? There ain't any rebel angels,” and I became weak and laid down again.
“Yes, there is a rebel angel, and she is a dandy,” said Jim, as he covered me up. “She is out by the fire making milk toast for you. You see, I went out to the Brown plantation, to try and steal an egg, and some bread, and milk, but I thought, on the way out, as it was a case of life and death, the stealing of it might rest heavy on your soul when you come to pass in your chips, so I concluded to go to the house and ask for it. There was a young woman there, and I told her the red-headed corporal that captured the female smuggler, was dying, and couldn't eat any hard-tack and bacon, and I wanted to fill him up on white folks food before he died, so he could go to heaven or elsewhere, as the case might be, on a full stomach, and she flew around like a kernel of pop-corn on a hot griddle, and picked up a basket of stuff, and had the nigger saddle a mule for her, and she came right to the camp with me, and said she would attend to everything. She's a thoroughbred, and don't you make no mistake about it.”
I must have gone to sleep when Jim was talking about the girl, for I dreamed that there was a million angels in rebel uniforms, poaching eggs for me. Pretty soon I heard a rustle of female clothes, and a soft, cool hand was placed on my forehead, my hair was brushed back, a perfumed handkerchief wiped the cold perspiration from my face, and I heard the rebel angel ask Jim what the doctor said about me. Jim told her what the horse doctor had said about curing a horse that had been sick the same as I was, and then she asked if we had not sent for the regular doc-doctor. Jim said we had not thought of that. She asked what had been done for me, and Jim told her about the French mustard episode, and the cayenne pepper tea. I thought she laughed, but it had become dark in the tent, and I couldn't see her face, but she told Jim to go after the regimental surgeon at once, and Jim went out. The angel asked me how I felt, and I told her I was all right, but she said I was all wrong. I thanked her for the trouble she had taken to come so far, and she said not to mention it. She said she had a brother who was a prisoner at the-North, and if somebody would only be kind to him if he was sick, she would be well repaid. She said the last she heard of him he was a prisoner of war at Madison, Wis., and she wondered what kind of people lived there, away off on the frontier, and if they could be kind to their enemies. That touched me where I lived, and I raised up on my elbow, and said:
“Why bless your heart, Miss, if your brother is a prisoner in old Camp Randlll, in Madison, he has got a pic nic. That town was my home before I came down here on this fool job. The people there are the finest in the world. All of them, from old Grovernor Lewis, to the poorest man in town, would set up nights with a sick person, whether he was a rebel or not. Your brother couldn't be better fixed if he was at home. The idea of a man suffering for food, clothing, or human sympathy in Madison, would be ridiculous. There is not a family in that town,” I said, becoming excited from the feeling that any one doubted the humanity of the people of Wisconsin, “but would divide their breakfast, and their clothes, and their money, with your brother, egad, I wish I was there myself. I will be responsible for your brother, Miss.”
She told me to lay down and be quiet, and not talk any more, as I was becoming wild. She said she was glad to know what kind of people lived there, as she had supposed it was a wilderness. In a few minutes Jim came back and said the doctor was playing poker with some other officers, in a captain's tent, and he didn't dare go in and break up the game, but he spoke to the doctor's orderly, and he said I ought to take castor oil. That didn't please the little woman at all, and she told Jim to go to the poker tent and tell the doctor to come at once, or she would come after him. It was not long before the doctor came stooping in to my pup tent. His idea was to have all sick men attend surgeon's call in the morning, and not go around visiting the sick in tents. He asked me what was the matter, and I told him nothing much. Then he asked me why I wasn't at surgeon's call in the morning. I told him the reason was that I was wading in a swamp, after the rebels that ambushed some of our boys the day before. “Then you've got malaria,” said he. “Take some quinine tonight, and come to surgeon's call in the morning.”