"What you and Si needs," he would say to Shorty, "is chicken and fresh 'taters. If you could have a good mess of chicken and 'taters every day you'd come up like Spring shoats. I declare I'd give that crick bottom medder o' mine, which hasn't it's beat on the Wabash, to have mother's coopful o' chickens here this minute."
FORE:"So'm I," returned Alf placidly. "I'm surprised that I'm doing as well as I am. But I gave myself good attendance, and that's a great thing. I'm awful hungry. Got anything to eat? Where's my haversack?"
"Say, my friend," said the stranger abruptly, "you got a pass. I couldn't. That old rascal of a Provost-Marshal's down on me because I wouldn't let him into a speculation with me. He's on the make every time, and wants to hog everything. Say, you're a sly one. You worked him fine on that wounded son racket. I think I'd like to tie to you. I'll make it worth your while to turn over that pass to me. It'll fit me just as well as it does you. I'll give you $50 to let me use that pass just two days, and then I'll return it to you."SUBJECT: The daily paper"But I can't git over missin' so many familiar voices in command, and hearin' others in their places," said Si. "That battalion drill they wuz havin' as we come in didn't sound like our rijimint at all. I could always tell which was our rijimint drillin' half a mile away by the sound of the voices. What a ringin' voice Capt. Scudder had. It beat the bugle. You could hear him sing out, 'Co. C, on right, into line! Forward, guide rightMarch!' farther'n you could the bugle. The last time I heard him wuz as we wuz' going up Snodgrass Hill. A rebel bullet went through his head just as he said, 'March!' Now, Lieut. Scripps is in command o' Co. C, and he's got a penny-whistle voice that I can't git used to.""It seems," he explained to Capt. McGillicuddy, loud enough for the company to hear, "that we are not to make an assault, after all. There's enough rebels over there in the works to eat us up without salt. We are ordered to only make a demonstration, and hold them, while the rest work down on their flanks toward Calhoun, which is six miles below, and get in their rear. You can let your men rest in place till further orders."
