g with the mess, there was a
fine pig for dinner. This circumstance caused the civilian to remark on
the good fare. The "forager" replied that pig was an uncommon dish, this
one having been kicked by one of the battery horses while stealing corn,
and instantly killed. The civilian seemed to doubt the statement after
his teeth had come down hard on a pistol bullet, and continued to
doubt, though assured that it was the head of a horse-shoe nail.

The most melancholy eating a soldier was ever forced to do, was, when
pinched with hunger, cold, wet, and dejected, he wandered over the
deserted field of battle and satisfied his cravings with the contents of
the haversacks of the dead. If there is anything which will overcome the
natural abhorrence which a man feels for the enemy, the loathing of the
bloated dead, and the awe engendered by the presence of death, solitude,
and silence, it is hunger. Impelled by its clamoring, men of high
principle and tenderest humanity become for the time void of
sensibility, and condescend to acts which, though justified by their
extremity, seem afterwards, even to the doers, too shameless to mention.

When rations became so very small that it was absolutely necessary to
supplement them, and the camp was permanently established, those men who
had the physical ability worked for the neighborhood farmers at cutting
cord-wood, harvesting the crops, killing hogs, or any other farm-work. A
stout man would cut a cord of wood a day and receive fifty cents in
money, or its equivalent in something eatable. Hogs were slaughtered for
the "fifth quarter." When the corn became large enough to eat, the
roasting ears, thrown in the ashes with the shucks on, and nicely
roasted, made a grateful meal. Turnip and onion patches also furnished
delightful and much-needed food, good raw or cooked.

Occasionally, when a mess was hard pushed for eatables, it became
necessary to resort to some ingenious method of disgusting a part of the
mess, that the others might eat their fill. The "pepper treatment" was a
common method practiced with the soup, which once failed. A shrewd
fellow, who loved things "hot," decided to have plenty of soup, and to
accomplish his purpose, as he passed and repassed the boiling pot,
dropped in a pod of red pepper. But, alas! for him, there was another
man like minded who adopted the same plan, and the result was that all
the mess waited in vain for that pot of soup to cool.

The individu