ion
days, a bombastic friend approached Colonel Tom, with the query: "Well,
sir, I presume your voice is still for war?"

To which the wit replied promptly: "Oh, yes, devilish still!"

Later, when the skies looked darkest and rumors of abandoning Richmond
were wildly flying, Colonel August was limping up the street. A
_quidnunc_ hailed him:

"Well! The city is to be given up. They're moving the medical stores."

"Glad of it!" called back Colonel Tom--"We'll get rid of all this blue
mass!"

From the various army camps floated out stories, epigrams and anecdotes
unnumbered; most of them wholly forgotten, with only a few remembered
from local color, or peculiar point. General Zeb Vance's apostrophe to
the buck-rabbit, flying by him from heavy rifle fire: "Go it,
cotton-tail! If I hadn't a reputation, I'd be with you!"--was a
favorite theme for variations. Similarly modified to fit, was the
protest of the western recruit, ordered on picket at Munson's Hill:

"Go yander ter keep 'un off! Wy, we'uns kem hyah ter fight th' Yanks;
an' ef you'uns skeer 'un off, how'n thunder ez thar goan ter be a
scrimmidge, no how?"

A different story--showing quick resource, where resources were
lacking--is told of gallant Theodore O'Hara, who left the noblest poem
of almost any war, "The Bivouac of the Dead." While he was
adjutant-general, a country couple sidled shyly up to headquarters of
his division, one day; the lady blushingly stating their business. It
was the most important one of life: they wanted to marry. So, a council
of war was held, no chaplain being available; and the general insisted
on O'Hara tying the knot. Finally, he consented to try; the couple
stood before him; the responses as to obedience and endowment were
made; and there O'Hara stuck fast!

"Go on!" prompted the general--"The benediction."

The A.A.G. paused, stammered; then, raising his hand grandly, shouted
in stentorian tones:

"In the name and by the authority of the Confederate States of North
America, I proclaim you man and wife!"

A grim joke is handed down from the winter camps before Atlanta, when
rations were not only worst but least. A knot round a mess-fire
examined ruefully the tiny bits of moldy bacon, stuck on their
bayonet-grills, when one hard old veteran remarked:

"Say, boys! Didn't them fellers wot died las' spring jest _git_ th'
commissary, though!"

Another, not very nice, still points equally the dire straits of the
men, from