note and said, "The hell they can't come till tomorrow. The impudence of
the recruits. They will come tonight!" I did not believe we would. In
my freshness I did not believe that any commander of troops would
deliberately break up a ball, and humiliate brave soldiers. I thought
my explanation to the commander that we had an engagement, would be
sufficient, that he would see that it was impossible to hurry matters.
We had been to a good deal of expense, and it was our duty, after
accepting the hospitalities of those people, to pay our indebtedness in
the only way we knew how, and so, as the boys had gathered around me
to see what was to be done, I said, "On with the dance. Let joy be
unconfined."

Our guests arrived on time, and shortly after it became dark, the Dutch
band we had hired from, a beer hall down town, struck up some sort of
foreign music, and "there was a sound of revelry by night." We danced
half a dozen times, smiled sweetly on our guests, walked around the
paths of the old garden, flirted a little perhaps, and talked big
with the male guests, and convinced them anew that we were regular old
battle-scarred vets, on detached duty of great importance. Near midnight
we all set down to lunch, around the beer tables, and everything was
going along smooth. The old gentleman who had been first to make our
acquaintance, and who had been the means of getting us into society,
proposed as a toast, "Our brave and generous hosts," and the boys called
upon me to respond. I got up on a bench and was making a speech that, if
I had been allowed to continue, would have been handed down in
history as one of the ablest of our time. It was conciliatory in tone,
calculated to cement a friendship between the army and the citizens of
the south, and show that while we were engaged in war, there was nothing
mean about us, and that we loved our neighbors as ourselves. I was just
getting warmed up, and our guests had spatted their hands at some of my
remarks, when I heard a tramp, tramp, tramp on the sidewalk outside, and
before I could breathe a squad of infantry soldiers had filed into the
garden, surrounded the dance-house, a dozen had formed in line before
the door, and a sergeant had walked in and ordered the citizens to
disperse, and said the recruits were under arrest. Well, I have been
in some tight places in my life, but that was the closest place I ever
struck. The old gentleman, the leader of our guests, turned to me and