well tamped
down. This was done on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday morning the beans
came out of their improvised oven piping hot and in no wise inferior to
those which furnished the staple article of the Sunday morning meal in so
many New England homes.

Burns tells us that "the well-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft
agley." On one occasion it occurred that we encamped one Saturday
afternoon on an old battlefield, and as it was known that we were to
remain there over Sunday, our cook began the usual preliminary work
whereby he was to furnish the company with baked beans on the following
morning. It so happened that at the spot where the hole was dug in the
ground an unexploded shell was buried a little farther down, and after the
live coals and the bean pot had been deposited in the earth long enough to
form a mutual acquaintance and become warm friends a loud explosion was
heard, and immediately the beans took an upward tendency and the air was
completely filled with them, confirming the assertion of Artemas Ward
that the "festive bean, when baked, is a _very lively fruit_."

The spring of 1863 was particularly favorable to the development of
typhoid fever, and a good many men in our regiment were in the hospital
with that disease. The surgeon ordered a gill of whiskey to be served to
every man daily, and as an inducement for him to "put it where it would do
the most good"--at least in the surgeon's opinion--he was told that he
would not be excused from duty if reported on the sick list. The whiskey
was usually taken by the men and put into their canteens with the water,
but in very many cases it did not take such a roundabout way in reaching
its destination. In my "mess" was a good, orthodox, prohibitionist deacon,
a man whose example I was told before leaving home that I could
consistently follow in all things--especially in _spiritual_ things. One
day he remarked to me that he had observed that I did not take my ration
of whiskey when it was dealt out. I told him that I had not felt the need
of it. He replied that he was very much afraid of the typhoid fever, and
had no scruples in regard to the taking of a little whiskey as a
precautionary measure, and if I was going to continue to refuse to take
my ration of it, he wished I would let it be poured into my canteen, and
he would turn it into his own when we got back to our quarters;--"only be
careful," said he, "that there is no water in your canteen." After