ere in the judges stand, peacefully playing poker,
while the battles were raging in the East and in the West, that would
have felt that an era of good feeling was about to dawn on the country.
After we had played enough poker, and I had lost everything I had that
was loose, I suggested that he sing a song, so he sung the "Bonnie Blue
Flag." I did not think it was right for him to work in a rebel song on
me, but it did sound splendid, and I forgot that there was any war, in
listening to the rich voice of my new friend. When he got through he
asked me to sing something. I never _could_ sing, anyway. My folks had
always told me that my voice sounded like a corn sheller, but he urged
me at his own peril, and I sung, or tried to, "We'll Hang Jeff Davis
to a Sour Apple Tree." I had no designs on Mr. Davis, honestly I hadn't,
and it was the farthest thing from my thoughts to hurt the feelings of
that young man, but before I had finished the first verse he took his
handkerchief out and placed it to his eyes. I stopped and apologized,
but he said not to mind him, as he was better now. He told me,
afterwards, in the strictest confidence, that my singing was the worst
he ever heard, and gave it as his opinion that if Jeff Davis could hear
me sing he would be willing, even anxious, to be hung. If I had been
sensitive about my musical talents, probably there would have been hard
feelings, and possibly bloodshed, right there, but I told him I always
knew I couldn't sing, and he said that I was in luck. Well, we fooled
around there till about ten o'clock in the morning, and decided that we
would part, and each seek our respective commands, so I put some more
horse liniment on his sprained ankle, and he saddled my horse for me,
and after expressions of mutual pleasure at meeting each other, and
promises that after the war we would seek each other out, we mounted,
he gave three cheers for the Yanks, and I gave three cheers for the
Johnnies, he divided his plug of tobacco with me, and I gave him the
bottle of horse liniment, he turned his horse towards the direction his
gray coats had taken the night before, while I turned my horse towards
the hole in the woods our fellows had made, and we left the race track
where we had fought so gamely, eat so heartily, and played poker so
disastrously, to me. As we were each about going into the woods, half
a mile apart, he waved his handkerchief at me, and I waved mine at him,
and we plunged into the