such
elaborate uniforms in active duty, so I kept it in the chaplain's tent.
I thought if I was killed and my body was sent home, the blouse would
come handy. The chaplain wore it occasionally, and he said any time I
wanted to wear any of his clothes to just help myself. An order had been
issued to move the following day, with ten days' rations, and some of
the boys asked for passes to go down town and have a little blow-out
before we started. They wanted me to go along, and so I got a pass, too.
We were to go down town in the afternoon and stay till nine o clock at
night, when we had to be in camp. I saddled up Jeff and looked for
my blouse, but it was gone, the chaplain having worn it to visit the
chaplain of some other regiment, so I took his coat and put it on, as
he had told me to. The coat had the chaplain's shoulder-straps on, but
I thought there would be no harm in wearing it, so about a dozen of
us privates started for town to have a good time, and I with
chaplain's-straps on. It was customary, when soldiers went to town on
a pass, to partake of intoxicating beverages more or less, as that was
about the only form of enjoyment, and I blush now, twenty-two years
afterward, to write the fact that we all got pretty full. It seemed
so like home to be able to go into a saloon and drink beer, good old
northern beer, and who knew but tomorrow we would be killed. So we ate,
drank, and were merry. One of the boys said when the officers got on a
tear, they would ride right into billiard saloons, and sometime shoot at
decanters of red liquor behind the bar, and he said a private was just
as good as an officer any day, and suggested that we mount our horses
and paint the town. We mounted, and rode about town, racing up and down
the streets, and finally we came to a billiard saloon, and half a
dozen of us rode right in, took cues out of the rack, and tried to play
billiards on horse-back. It was a grand picnic then, though it seems
foolish now. My horse Jeff would do anything I asked him, and when I
rode up to the bar and told him to rear up, he put both fore feet on the
bar, and looked at the bartender as much as to say, "set up the best you
have got."

The chaplain's shoulder-straps gave the crowd a sort of confidence that
everything was all right, and after exhibiting in a saloon for a time,
there was something said about horse-racing, and I said my horse could
beat anything on four legs, so we adjourned to the outskirts