gur,
That they would run from Lookout Mount,
Who fought so well at Chickamauga!"

Round many a smoky camp-fire were sung clever songs, whose humor died
with their gallant singers, for want of recording memories in those
busy days. Latham, Caskie and Page McCarty sent out some of the best of
the skits; a few verses of one by the latter's floating to mind, from
the snowbound camp on the Potomac, stamped by his vein of rollicking
satire-with-a-tear in it:

"Manassas' field ran red with gore,
With blood the Bull Run ran;
The freeman struck for hearth and home,
Or any other man!
And Longstreet with his fierce brigade
Stood in the red redan;
He waved his saber o'er his head,
Or any other man!
Ah! few shall part where many meet,
In battle's bloody van;
The snow shall be their winding-sheet,
Or any other man!"

Naturally enough, with a people whose nerves were kept at abnormal
tension, reaction carried the humor of the South largely into travesty.
Where the reality was ever somber, creation of the unreal found popular
and acceptable form in satiric verse. Major Caskie--who ever went into
battle with a smile on his lips--found time, between fights, for broad
pasquinade on folly about him, with pen and pencil. His very clever
parody of a touching and well-known poem of the time, found its way to
many a camp-fire and became a classic about the Richmond "hells." It
began:

"You can never win them back,
Never, never!
And you'd better leave the track
Now forever!
Tho' you 'cut' and 'deal the pack'
And 'copper' every Jack,
You'll lose 'stack' after 'stack'--
Forever!"

Everything tending to bathos--whether for the cause, or against
it--caught its quick rebuke, at the hands of some glib funmaker. Once
an enthusiastic admirer of the hero of Charleston indited a glowing
ode, of which the refrain ran:

_Beau sabreur, beau canon_,
_Beau soldat_--Beauregard!

Promptly came another, and most distorted version; its peculiar refrain
enfolding:

Beau Brummel, Beau Fielding,
Beau Hickman--Beauregard!

As it is not of record that the commander of the Army of Northern
Virginia ever discovered the junior laureate, the writer will not essay
to do so.

Colonel Tom August, of the First Virginia, was the Charles Lamb of
Confederate war-wits; genial, quick and ever gay. Early in secess