ut the first drink to some, and from the way it
tastes it must have been made out of rotten corn and not two months old,
and altogether straggling increased considerably."

"Straggling! why they are wallowing like hogs in the mud, Adjutant! It
is a shame, and if some one of my superiors will not prefer charges
against the General and his Adjutant, I will. Men of mine are drunk that
I never knew to taste a drop before," indignantly exclaimed the Western
Virginia Captain, as, with hat off, face aglow with perspiration, eyes
flashing, and boots that indicated service in taking the soundings of
the mud on the march, he came panting up with rapid strides. "Now, sir,
fourteen of my best men are drunk--the first drunken man I have had
during the campaign--and I'll be shot to death with musketry, sooner
than punish a single man of them."

"But discipline must be kept up," said the Adjutant.

"Discipline! do you say, Adjutant?" retorted the Captain. "If you want
to see discipline go to Division Head-quarters. Why old Pigey is
prancing around like a steed at a muster,--crazy! absolutely crazy! His
cocked hat is more crooked than ever, and the knot of his muffler is at
the back of his neck, and the ends flying like wings. Just a few minutes
ago he stopped suddenly while on a canter, right by one of my men, lying
along the road-side, that he had made drunk, and chuckled and laughed,
and lolled from side to side in his saddle, and then at a canter again
rode to another one and went through the same performance. And his
Adjutant-General--why one of my men not ten minutes ago led his horse to
Head-quarters. He was so drunk, actually, that his eyes looked like
those of a shad out of water a day,--his feet out of the stirrups, the
reins loose about his horse's neck, his hands hanging listlessly down,
and the liquor oozing out of the corners of his sucker mouth. And there
he was, his horse carrying him about at random among the stumps, and
officers and men laughing at him, expecting to see him go over on the
one side or the other every moment. Now, it is a burning shame. And I,
for one, will expose them, if it takes the hide off. Here are our
Colonels confined just for no offence at all,--for doing their duty, in
fact,--and this man, after having Court-martialed all that he could of
his command, trying to demoralize the rest by whiskey. Now, sir, the
higher the rank the more severe the punishment should be. Just before we
started Burne