of town for
a race, followed by half the people in town. We had a horse-race,
and Jeff beat them all, and wherever I went the crowd would cheer the
chaplain. They said they liked to see a man in that position who could
unbend himself and mix up with the boys. There never was a chaplain more
popular than the "Wisconsin preacher" was. It did not occur to me that
I was placing the chaplain in an unfavorable position before the public,
by wearing his coat. _Nothing_ occurred to me, that day, except that we
were having a high old time. Finally, after dark, one of our boys got
into a row with a loafer in a saloon, and picked the loafer up and
tossed him through the window, to the sidewalk. This was very wrong, but
it couldn't be helped. There was a great noise, cries for the provost
guard, and we knew that the only way to get out of the scrape honorably,
would be to get out real quick, so we mounted and rode to our camp. My
horse was the fastest and I got home first, unsaddled my horse and went
to the tent, took off the chaplain's coat and hung it up carefully, and
was at work writing a letter, and thinking how my horse acted as though
he had been on sprees before, he enjoyed it so, when I heard a noise
outside, and it was evident that the provost guard had followed us to
camp, and were making complaint to the colonel about our conduct down
town. Finally the guard went away, and shortly the colonel and the
adjutant called at our tent and inquired for the chaplain. I told them
the chaplain had been away most of the day, and had not returned. The
colonel and the adjutant winked at each other, and asked me if he wasn t
away a good deal. I told them that he was away some. They asked me if I
never noticed that his breath had a peculiar smell. I told them that it
was occasionally a little loud. They went away thoughtfully. Now that
I think of it I ought to have explained that the peculiarity of the
chaplain's breath was caused from eating pickled onions of the sanitary
stores, but it did not occur to me at the time. After a while the
chaplain came back, asked me if anybody had died during the day, took a
drink of blackberry brandy for what ailed him, and we retired. The next
morning there was a circus. The little town boasted, a daily paper, and
it contained the following:

"The community is prepared to overlook an occasional scene
of hilarity among the Federal soldiers stationed in this
vicinity, but when a gang of