would lay awake
nights and think of people at home and wonder what they were doing, and
if they were laying awake nights thinking of me, or caring whether I was
alive, or buried in the swamps of the South. It was about the time of
year when at home we always went off shooting, and I thought how much
better it was to go off shooting ducks and geese, and chickens, that
could not shoot back, than to be hunting bloodthirsty Confederates that
were just as liable to hunt us, and who could kill, with great ease. I
thought of a pup I had at home that was just the right age to train, and
that he would be spoiled if he was not trained that season. O, how I
did want to train that pup. The news that one of my comrades had been
granted a furlough, after three years' service, and that he was going
home, made me desperate, and I dreamed that I had waylaid and murdered
the fortunate soldier, and gone home on his furlough. The idea of
getting a furlough was the one idea in my mind, and the next morning as
I took my horse to the veterinary surgeon for treatment,{*} I had a talk
with the horse doctor about the possibilities of getting a furlough.
I had known him before the war, when he kept a livery stable, and as I
owed him a small livery bill, I thought he would give it to me straight.
The horse doctor had his sleeves rolled up, and was holding a horse's
tongue in one hand while he poured some medicine down the animal's
throat out of a bottle with the other hand, which made me sorry for the
horse, as I remembered my experience at surgeon's call, in drinking a
dose of castor oil out of a bottle, and I was mean-enough to be glad
they played it on horses as well as the soldiers. The horse doctor
returned the horse's tongue to it's mouth, kicked the animal in the
ribs, turned and wiped his hands on a bale of hay, and said:

"Well, George, to get a furlough a man has got to have plenty of gall,
especially a man who has only been to the front a couple of weeks. There
is no use making an application in the regular way, to your captain,
have him endorse it and send it to regimental headquarters, and so on to
brigade headquarters, because you would never hear of it again. My idea
would be for you to go right to the general commanding the division, and
tell him you have got to go home. But you mustn't go crawling to him,
and whining. He is a quick-tempered man, and he hates a coward. Go
to him and talk familiar with him, and act as though you had