always
associated with him, and slap him on the shoulder, and make yourself at
home. Just make up a good, plausible story, and give it to him, and if
he seems irritated, give him to understand that he can t frighten you,
and just as likely as not he will give you a furlough. I don't say he
will, mind you, but it would be just like him. But he does like to be
treated familiar like, by the boys."

* I neglected to say, in my account of the battle at the
race-track, that when firing with my revolver, at my friend
the rebel, I put one bullet-hole through the right ear of my
horse. I was so excited at the time that I did not know it,
and only discovered it a week later when currying off my
horse, which I made a practice of doing once a week, with a
piece of barrel-stave, when I noticed the horse's ear was
swelled up about as big as a canvas ham. I took him to the
horse doctor, who reduced the swelling so we could find the
hole through the horse's ear, and the horse doctor tied a
blue ribbon in the hole. He said the blue ribbon would help
heal the sore, but later I found that he had put the ribbon
in the ear to call attention to my poor marksmanship, and
the boys got so they made comments and laughed at me every
time I appeared with the horse.

I thanked the horse doctor and went away with my horse, resolved to have
a furlough or know the reason why. The general's headquarters were about
half a mile from our camp, and after drill that morning I went to see
him. I had seen him several times, at the colonel's headquarters, and
he always seemed mad about something, and I had thought he was about the
crossest looking man I ever saw, but if there was any truth in what the
horse doctor had told me, he was easily reached if a man went at him
right, and I resolved that if pure, unadulterated cheek and monumental
gall would accomplish anything, I would have a furlough before night,
for a homesicker man never lived than I was. I went up to the general's
tent and a guard halted me and asked me what I wanted, and I said I
wanted to see "his nibs," and I walked right by the guard, who seemed
stunned by my cheek. I saw the general in his tent, with his coat
off, writing, and he _did_ look savage. Without taking off my hat, or
saluting him, I went right up to him and sat down on the end of a trunk
that was in the tent, and with a tremendous effort to look familiar