er.

It has seemed to me as though the people of this country had got so
mixed up about the matter that it was the duty of some private soldier
to write a description of _the_ decisive battle of the war, and as I was
the private soldier who fought that battle on the Union side, against
fearful odds, _viz_: against a Confederate soldier who was braver than
I was, a better horseback rider, and a better poker player, I feel it
my duty to tell about it. I have already mentioned it to a few veterans,
and they have advised me to write an article for the _Century_, but
I have felt a delicacy about entering the lists, a plain, unvarnished
private soldier, against those generals. While I am something of a liar
myself, and can do fairly well in my own class, I should feel that in
the _Century_ I was entered in too fast a class of liars, and the result
would be that I should not only lose my entrance fee, but be distanced.
So I have decided to contribute this piece of history solely for the
benefit of the readers of my own paper, as they will believe me.

It was in 1864 that I joined a cavalry regiment in the department of the
Gulf, a raw recruit in a veteran regiment. It may be asked why I waited
so long before enlisting, and why I enlisted at all, when the war was so
near over. I know that the most of the soldiers enlisted from patriotic
motives, and because they wanted to help shed blood, and wind up the
war. I did not. I enlisted for the bounty. I thought the war was nearly
over, and that the probabilities were that the legiment I had enlisted
in would, be ordered home before I could get to it. In fact the
re-cruiting officer told me as much, and he said I would get my bounty,
and a few months' pay, and it would be just like finding money. He said
at that late day I would never see a rebel, and if I did have to join
the regiment, there would be no fighting, and it would just be one
continued picnic for two or three months, and there would be no more
danger than to go off camping for a duck shoot. At my time of life, now
that I have become gray, and bald, and my eyesight is failing, and I
have become a grandfather, I do not want to open the sores of twenty-two
years ago. I want a quiet life. So I would not assert that the
recruiting officer deliberately lied to me, but I was the worst deceived
man that ever enlisted, and if I ever meet that man, on this earth, it
will go hard with him. Of course, if he is dead, that settles it,