carpeted floor and were soon sound asleep.

In the morning the breakfast was enough to craze a Confederate soldier.
Buttermilk-biscuit, fresh butter, eggs, milk, fried bacon, coffee! After
the breakfast, business.

The farmer proposed to feed and lodge the soldiers, and pay them eleven
dollars monthly, for such manual labor as they could perform on his
farm. The soldiers, having in remembrance the supper and breakfast,
accepted the terms. The new "hands" were now led to the garden, where
the farmer had half an acre plowed up, and each was furnished with an
old, dull hoe, with crooked, knotty handles. The farmer then, with
blushes and stammering, explained that he desired to have each
particular clod chopped up fine with the hoe. The soldiers--town
men--thought this an almost superhuman task and a great waste of time,
but, so that the work procured food, they cared not what the work might
be, and at it they went with a will. All that morning, until the dinner
hour, those two hoes rose and fell as regularly as the pendulum of a
clock swings from side to side, and almost as fast.

The negro men and women in the neighborhood, now in the full enjoyment
of newly-conferred liberty, and consequently having no thought of doing
any work, congregated about the garden, leaned on the fence, gazed
sleepily at the toiling soldiers, chuckled now and then, and
occasionally explained their presence by remarking to each other, "Come
here to see dem dar white folks wuckin."

There were onions growing in that garden, which the soldiers were glad
to pull up and eat. It was angel's food to men who had fed for months
on salt bacon and corn bread without one mouthful of any green thing.
When dinner time came the "hands" were, to say the least, very decidedly
hungry.

[Illustration: SEE DEM WHITE FOLKS WUCKIN]

Buttermilk-biscuit figured prominently again, and the soldiers found
great difficulty in exercising any deliberation in the eating of them.
It really seemed to them that, were it reasonable behavior, they could
devour every morsel provided for the entire family. But when they had
devoured about two thirds of all there was to eat, and the host said,
"Have another biscuit?" they replied, "No, thank you, _plenty_--greatest
plenty!" all the while as hungry as when they sat down. It was only a
question of _who_ was to be hungry--the soldiers or the children. There
was not enough for all. After dinner the survivors went again to the
ga