used me up. This will illustrate how the army "bummer" never let an
opportunity slip for a practical joke, cost what it might. This fellow
was a specimen of this genus that was ubiquitous in the army. Every
regiment had one or more. They were always dirty and lousy, a sort of
tramp, but always on hand at the wrong time and in the wrong place. A
little indifferent sort of service could be occasionally worked out of
them, but they generally skulked whenever there was business on hand,
and then they were so fertile of excuses that somehow they escaped the
penalty and turned up again when the "business" was over. Their one
specialty was foraging. They were born foragers. What they could not
steal was not to be had, and this probably accounts in a measure for
their being endured. Their normal occupation was foraging and,
incidentally, Sancho Panza like, looking for adventure. They knew more
of our movements, and also of those of the enemy, than the commanding
general of either. One of the most typical of this class that I knew was
a young fellow I had known very well before the war. He was a shining
light in society, occupying a high and responsible business position.
His one fault was his good-fellowship and disposition to be convivial
when off duty. He enlisted among the first, when the war broke out in
1861, and I did not see him again until one day one of this genus
"bummer" strayed into our camp. He stuck his head into my tent and
wanted to know how "Fred Hitchcock was." I had to take a long second
look to dig out from this bunch of rags and filth my one-time Beau
Brummel acquaintance at home. His eyes were bleared, and told all too
surely the cause of the transformation. His brag was that he had skipped
every fight since he enlisted. "It's lots more fun," he said, "to climb
a tree well in the rear and see the show. It's perfectly safe, you know,
and then you don't get yourself killed and planted. What is the use,"
he argued, "of getting killed and have a fine monument erected over you,
when you can't see it nor make any use of it after it is done? Let the
other fellows do that if they want to. I've no use for monuments." Poor
fellow, his cynical ideas were his ruin. Better a thousand times had he
been "planted" at the front, manfully doing his duty, than to save a
worthless life and return with the record of a poltroon, despised by
himself and everybody else.

This review by President Lincoln and the new commander-in-