that I
allowed the whiskey to be poured into my canteen; but the good deacon's
argument as to its being a preventive for typhoid fever was so convincing
that I did not allow it to be transferred to his.

As is well known, a wide and almost impassable gulf of difference exists
between the officers and the rank and file in the regular army. But I had
not been long in the volunteer service before I discovered that
considerable difference existed even there between the private soldier and
the officer. To illustrate. While in Suffolk there happened to be an "r"
in the month. Walking along the principal street one day, I espied in the
window of a restaurant a card, upon which was printed or painted in
letters of large dimensions these two words: "STEAMED OYSTERS." Visions of
Pawtucket and Providence river bivalves immediately came up before me, and
I then and there resolved to have a good square meal of "steamed oysters,"
even though it should pecuniarily impoverish me. So, entering the
restaurant, I seated myself upon one of the unoccupied high stools at the
oyster bar. And here I will remark that I could not have felt the
importance of my elevated position any more if my blouse had been covered
with shoulder-straps. Presently the proprietor of the establishment
presented himself, and eyeing me with an air of indifference almost
amounting to contempt, he asked me what I wanted. I replied, "Steamed
oysters." I confess I was somewhat surprised and considerably "down in the
mouth" when he informed me that he couldn't sell steamed oysters to a
private soldier. My suggestion that he might overcome the difficulty by
_giving them to me_, failed to secure the much-coveted bivalves, and I
retired from the restaurant a sadder but wiser man than when I entered it.

As I remarked at the outset, there was considerable difference between the
private soldier and the officer even in the volunteer service; and this
was, as I have shown, particularly true as to which one should eat steamed
oysters. But the line had to be drawn somewhere, I suppose, and so at
Suffolk they drew it at steamed oysters, and, unfortunately for the man
who was serving his country at thirteen dollars a month, he "got left."

CHAPTER VIII.

While the Eleventh regiment was in service only nine months, and was never
in action as a full regiment, yet it lost in that time two colonels. A
certain fatality appeared to await those who were sent to take command of