for this, and we all felt mean when we did it. A
table-spoonful, however, was all that each man had to take from his
horse for a cup of coffee. The following winter food got scarcer and
scarcer for both man and beast, and the horses became thinner and
thinner.

I do not know how others felt about the bodies of the dead horses that
lay scattered over the battlefields, but this sight distressed me almost
as much as did the bodies of the soldiers. They were so faithful and
unfaltering. When the bugle sounded, any hour of the night, or any hour
of the day, regardless of how short a time they had rested or how many
miles they had marched, they were always ready to respond. They knew all
the bugle calls. If it were saddle up, or the feed or the water call, he
was as ready to answer one as the other. And he was so noble and so
brave in battle. He seemed to love the sound of the guns. The cavalryman
might lie low on the neck of his horse for shelter as the missiles of
death hissed about him, but the horse never flinched, except when
struck.

The cavalryman often used his horse for a breastwork while he fired over
his back, but the horse stood like a Casabianca on the burning deck of
his father's ship. Did you ever read "Black Beauty?" If you have not,
read it. Lee had 75,000 "Black Beauties" in his army, every one of
which, or nearly every one, is worthy of a monument. We build monuments
for our dead soldiers, for those we know and for the unknown dead. What
would you think of a monument some day, somewhere in Virginia, in honor
of Lee's noble horses?

I hardly know which branch of the service ought to receive the highest
honor, the wagon horses, the artillery horses or the cavalry horses. I
was very close to the latter, and knew them better, but the wagon and
artillery horses had a warm place in my heart. To see the wagon horses
hitched to heavy, loaded wagons, with shells falling around them, with
no way of escape, was pathetic. To see the artillery horses torn to
pieces by shells that were not intended for them touched a tender cord,
and if I should be asked to write their names on the roll of fame,
perhaps it would be in the order in which I have named them.

The cavalry horse, however, was my pet, and I should not want to see
them any less honored than the former, but they all had their places.
Farragut, in the rigging of his flagship giving orders, was all right,
but a wooden Indian would have done about as well if th