SOLDIER 23 



like a mettlesome steed. Inbred sin will stick out and I am 

 no exception. . . . 



By the way, Dick, I should be very much obliged to you 

 if you would occasionally send me a weekly Springfield 

 "Republican." Reading matter we have none, and when 

 New York papers arrive they command 25 and 30 cents, so 

 that we poor devils, who have not yet received a cent of 

 pay, are forced to go without. You don't know what it is 

 to be cut off from all communication with the outer world 

 for a week or ten days at a time, and during that interval 

 hear nothing but the discouraging rumors and reports in- 

 dustriously circulated by the rebels. However, we are fast 

 getting over our first refreshing verdure and are learning 

 to disbelieve everything we hear. 



I am in a confoundedly cross state of mind to-day for 

 ye following good and sufficient causes: 1st. I have just 

 come off guard in a soaking rain, and though being neither 

 sugar nor salt, have yet nearly melted away. 2nd. Having 

 a prisoner consigned to my tender mercies to be fed on ye 

 bread of affliction and ye waters of repentance until further 

 orders, ye same prisoner did at ye dead hour of noon break 

 in ye guard-house and abscond to his quarters, did there 

 fare sumptuously on hard-tack and salt-horse; that this 

 same coming to ye ears of ye colonel, he did up and sour 

 on ye officer of ye guard, and sending him a pair of hand- 

 cuffs did order forthwith to arrest ye delinquent and confine 

 him in close quarters; that in ye performance of ye said 

 duty a spirited encounter did there and thereupon take 

 place, in which ye offender did get upset in one corner and 

 ye officer very nearly in the other; that ye criminal, being 

 finally secured, did create such a row, ye same was forced 



