hree apparently false starts; turns
a somersault by placing his head on the ground and flopping over on his
back; gets up and whickers like a horse; goes half-hammered, hop, step,
and jump--he says, to loosen up his joints--scratches up the ground with
his hands and feet, flops his arms and crows like a rooster, and says,
"Bully for Bragg; he's hell on a retreat," and announces his readiness.
The drum is tapped, and off they start. Well, Billy Webster beat him one
hundred yards in the two hundred, and Tennessee came back and said, "Well,
boys, I'm beat; Billy Martin, hand over the stakes to Billy Webster.
I'm beat, but hang me if I didn't outrun the whole Yankee army coming out
of Kentucky; got away from Lieutenant Lansdown and the whole detail at
Chattanooga with half a hog, a fifty pound sack of flour, a jug of
Meneesee commissary whisky, and a camp-kettle full of brown sugar.
I'm beat. Billy Martin, hand over the stakes. Bully for Bragg; he's
hell on a retreat." Tennessee was trying bluff. He couldn't run worth a
cent; but there was no braver or truer man ever drew a ramrod or tore a
cartridge than Tennessee.

EATING MUSSELS

Reader, did you ever eat a mussel? Well, we did, at Shelbyville.
We were camped right upon the bank of Duck river, and one day Fred Dornin,
Ed Voss, Andy Wilson and I went in the river mussel hunting. Every one
of us had a meal sack. We would feel down with our feet until we felt a
mussel and then dive for it. We soon filled our sacks with mussels in
their shells. When we got to camp we cracked the shells and took out the
mussels. We tried frying them, but the longer they fried the tougher
they got. They were a little too large to swallow whole. Then we stewed
them, and after a while we boiled them, and then we baked them, but every
flank movement we would make on those mussels the more invulnerable they
would get. We tried cutting them up with a hatchet, but they were so
slick and tough the hatchet would not cut them. Well, we cooked them,
and buttered them, and salted them, and peppered them, and battered them.
They looked good, and smelt good, and tasted good; at least the fixings
we put on them did, and we ate the mussels. I went to sleep that night.
I dreamed that my stomach was four grindstones, and that they turned in
four directions, according to the four corners of the earth. I awoke
to hear four men yell out, "O, save, O, save me from eating any more
mussels!"