er than his acts, for I hardly ever got my hands on
rebel stock or supplies that I did not find Johnson trying to pull them
off.

After our visit, General Sherman suggested that we should all go to the
theater that evening, and under his lead we went to the principal opera
house to hear the play of Hamlet. We were all strangers in Nashville; even
General Grant was not well known. We paid our way in and found the theater
crowded with soldiers going to and returning from veteran furloughs.
General Sherman, who you all know was a great lover of the theater, sat
alongside of me and soon commenced criticising the play, earnestly
protesting that it was being murdered. I had to check him several times
and tell him unless he kept quiet the soldiers in the audience would
recognize him and there would be a scene. We had entered late, and there
soon came on the scene where Hamlet soliloquizes over the skull of Yorick.
The audience was perfectly still, endeavoring to comprehend the actor's
words, when a soldier far back in the audience rose up and in a clear
voice called out, as the actor held up the skull, "Say, pard, what is it,
Yank or Reb?" The house appreciated the point and was instantly in an
uproar, and General Grant said we had better leave, so we went quietly
out, no one discovering Grant's or Sherman's presence. Sherman immediately
suggested that we should find an oyster-house and get something to eat,
and General Rawlins was put forward as guide and spokesman. He led us to a
very inviting place. We went in and found there was but one large table in
the place. There was one man sitting at it, and Rawlins, in his modest
way, without informing the man who his party was, asked him if he would
change to a smaller table and let us have that one. The man said the table
was good enough for him and kept on eating, and Rawlins backed out into
the street again. Sherman said if we depended on Rawlins we would get
nothing to eat, and said he would see what could be done. He hailed a man
who pointed out another saloon kept by a woman, and to this Sherman took
us, and she served us what we then considered a very nice oyster stew. As
we sat around the table, we talked more than we ate, and by the time we
had half finished our supper the woman came in and asked for the pay and
said we must leave, as under the military rules her house must close at 12
midnight and it was then a few minutes after that hour; so out we got and
took our way t