ook a big swallow, and before I got back to my quarters I had
had a fight with a mule-driver, and when the quartermaster interfered I
had insulted him by telling him I knew him when he carried a hod, before
the war, and I shouted, "Mort, more mort!" until he was going to lather
me with a mule whip, but he couldn't catch me. As I run by the surgeon's
tent, somebody remarked that I had experienced a remarkably sudden
cure for chills. The whisky was not real good, but as I had heard the
hospital steward say they had just put in a requisition for two barrels
of it, to be prepared for an epidemic of chills, I thought the boys
ought to know it, so that day I went around to the different companies
and told the boys how to play it for a drink. There are very few
soldiers, in the best regiment, that will not take a drink of whisky
when far away from home, discouraged, and worn out by marching, and
our fellows looked favorably upon the proposition to all turn out to
surgeon's call the next morning. I shall never forget the look on the
face of the good old surgeon, as the boys formed in line in front of his
tent the next morning. The last time I saw him, he was in his coffin,
about five years ago, at the soldier's home, and a few of the survivors
of the regiment that lived here had gone out to the home to take a last
look at him, and act as mourners at the funeral. He looked much older
than when he used to ask us fellows the conumdrum, "What's the matter?"
but there was that same look on his white, cold face that there was the
morning that nearly the whole regiment reported for "bitters."

There must have been four hundred men in line, and it happened that I
was the first to be called. When he asked me about my condition, and
I told him of the chills, he studied a minute, then looked at me, and
said, You are bilious, David, give him a dose of castor oil. I know I
turned pale, for it was a great come down from quinine and whisky to
castor oil, for a healthy man, and I kicked. I told him I had the shakes
awfully, and all I wanted was a quinine powder. I knew they had put all
their quinine into a barrel of whisky, so I was safe in asking for dry
quinine. The good old gentleman finally relented on the castor oil, and
told David to give me a swallow of the quinine bitters, but there was a
twinkle in his eye, as he noticed what a big swallow I took, and then he
said, "You will be well tomorrow; you needn't come again." I dropped out
of t