the Fourth was called "Guide
Post," E. L. Lansdown was called "Left Tenant," some were called by
the name of "Greasy," some "Buzzard," others "Hog," and "Brutus," and
"Cassius," and "Caesar," "Left Center," and "Bolderdust," and "Old
Hannah;" in fact, the nick-names were singular and peculiar, and when a
man got a nick-name it stuck to him like the Old Man of the Sea did to
the shoulders of Sinbad, the sailor.

On our retreat the soldiers got very thirsty for tobacco (they always
used the word thirsty), and they would sometimes come across an old field
off which the tobacco had been cut and the suckers had re-sprouted from
the old stalk, and would cut off these suckers and dry them by the fire
and chew them. "Sneak" had somehow or other got hold of a plug or two,
and knowing that he would be begged for a chew, had cut it up in little
bits of pieces about one-fourth of a chew. Some fellow would say, "Sneak,
please give me a chew of tobacco." Sneak would say, "I don't believe
I have a piece left," and then he would begin to feel in his pockets.
He would pull that hand out and feel in another pocket, and then in his
coat pockets, and hid away down in an odd corner of his vest pocket he
would accidentally find a little chew, just big enough to make "spit
come." Sneak had his pockets full all the time. The boys soon found
out his inuendoes and subterfuges, but John would all the time appear as
innocent of having tobacco as a pet lamb that has just torn down a nice
vine that you were so careful in training to run over the front porch.
Ah, John, don't deny it now!

I JINE THE CAVALRY

When we got to Charleston, on the Hiwassee river, there we found the
First Tennessee Cavalry and Ninth Battalion, both of which had been made
up principally in Maury county, and we knew all the boys. We had a
good old-fashioned handshaking all around. Then I wanted to "jine the
cavalry." Captain Asa G. Freeman had an extra horse, and I got on him
and joined the cavalry for several days, but all the time some passing
cavalryman would make some jocose remark about "Here is a webfoot who
wants to jine the cavalry, and has got a bayonet on his gun and a
knapsack on his back." I felt like I had got into the wrong pen, but
anyhow I got to ride all of three days. I remember that Mr. Willis
B. Embry gave me a five-pound package of Kallickanick smoking tobacco,
for which I was very grateful. I think he was quartermaster of the First
Tenne