gormandizers. Thousands who kept their
place in ranks to the very end were equally as tired, as sick, as
hungry, and as hopeless, as these scamps, but too proud to tell it or
use it as a means of escape from hardship. But many a poor fellow
dropped in the road and breathed his last in the corner of a fence, with
no one to hear his last fond mention of his loved ones. And many whose
ambition it was to share every danger and discomfort with their
comrades, overcome by the heat, or worn out with disease, were compelled
to leave the ranks, and while friend and brother marched to battle, drag
their weak and staggering frames to the rear, perhaps to die pitiably
alone, in some hospital.

[Illustration: AN ACCOMPLISHED STRAGGLER.]

After all, the march had more pleasure than pain. Chosen friends walked
and talked and smoked together; the hills and valleys made themselves a
panorama for the feasting of the soldiers' eyes; a turnip patch here and
an onion patch there invited him to occasional refreshment; and it was
sweet to think that "camp" was near at hand, and rest, and the journey
almost ended.

CHAPTER V.

COOKING AND EATING.

Rations in the Army of Northern Virginia were alternately superabundant
and altogether wanting. The quality, quantity, and frequency of them
depended upon the amount of stores in the hands of the commissaries, the
relative position of the troops and the wagon trains, and the many
accidents and mishaps of the campaign. During the latter years and
months of the war, so uncertain was the issue as to time, quantity, and
composition, that the men became in large measure independent of this
seeming absolute necessity, and by some mysterious means, known only to
purely patriotic soldiers, learned to fight without pay and to find
subsistence in the field, the stream, or the forest, and a shelter on
the bleak mountain side.

Sometimes there was an abundant issue of bread, and no meat; then meat
in any quantity, and no flour or meal; sugar in abundance, and no coffee
to be had for "love or money;" and then coffee in plenty, without a
grain of sugar; for months nothing but flour for bread, and then
nothing but meal (till all hands longed for a biscuit); or fresh meat
until it was nauseating, and then salt-pork without intermission.

[Illustration: THE COOK'S PREROGATIVES INVADED.]

To be one day without anything to eat was common. Two days' fasting,
marching and fighting was not uncommon, and