nly with a picket off
the fence, and saved the garrison from capture. The thing worked
to perfection, and when our command came up, the horses panting and
perspiring, and the boys looking wild, the captain in command asked me
how many there was of em, and I told him about forty, and he said I
had done well to drive them so far, and he charged by me after them.
I yelled to the captain to try and kill that long-legged rebel on
the sorrel horse, and get my meershaum pipe, but he didn't hear me. I
hurried along as fast as I could, but before I caught up, there was
a good deal of firing, and when I got there flankers were out in the
woods, and there was sorrow, for three or four boys in blue had been
killed in an ambush, and the rebels had got away across a bayou. As I
rode up on my mule, with the picket still in my hand, I saw the three
soldiers of my regiment lying dead under a tree, two others were wounded
and had bandages around their heads, and for the first time since I had
been a soldier, I realized that war was not a picnic. I could not keep
my eyes off the faces of my dead comrades, the best and bravest boys
in the regiment, boys who always got to the front when there was a
skirmish. To think that I had been riding right amongst the rebels who
had done this thing but a few minutes before, and never thought that
death would claim anybody so soon. I wondered if those rebels were not
sorry they had killed such good boys. I wondered, as I thought of the
fathers and mothers, and sisters of my dead companions, whether the
rebels would not sympathize with them, and then I thought suppose our
fellows had not been killed, and we had killed some of the Confederates,
wouldn't it have been just as sorrowful, wouldn't _their_ fathers,
mothers and sisters have mourned the same.

Then I made a resolve that I would never kill anybody if I could help
it; I even decided that if I should meet the rebel that had my meershaum
pipe, I would not fight him to get it. If he wasn't gentleman enough to
give it up peaceably, he could keep it, and be darned. Just then some
of our skirmishers came in carrying another dead body, and we were all
speculating as to which one of our poor boys had fallen, when we noticed
that the dead soldier had on a gray suit, and it was soon found that he
was one of the Confederates. He was laid down beside our dead boys, and
I don't know but I felt about as bad to see him dead, as it was possible
to feel. It is tr