sconsolate
manner, looking for all the world like a half-hatched chicken."

I have made careful inquiry among officers and soldiers who served in
the late war, and I find this instance, which occurred in Virginia, was
not exceptional. A lieutenant in the Maine infantry volunteers wrote on
July 13, 1863, from Cape Parapet, about two miles above New Orleans:

"We have had some drunkenness but not so much as when we were in other
places; two of my company were drunk, and the next day I had a hole cut
in the head of a barrel, and put a placard on each side to tell the
bearer that 'I am wearing this for getting drunk,' and with this they
marched through the streets of the regiment four hours each. I don't
believe they will get drunk again very soon."

The officer who wrote the above adds to-day:

"This punishment was not original with me, as I had read of its being
done in the Army of the Potomac, and I asked permission of the colonel
to try it, the taking away of a soldier's pay by court-martial having
little permanent effect. In those cases one of the men quit drinking,
and years afterward thanked me for having cured him of the habit, saying
he had never drank a drop of liquor since he wore the barrel-shirt."

Another Union soldier, a member of Company B, Thirteenth Massachusetts
Volunteers, writes that while with General Banks at Darnstown, Virginia,
he saw a man thus punished who had been found guilty of stealing: With
his head in one hole, and his arms in smaller holes on either side of
the barrel, placarded "I am a thief," he was under a corporal's guard
marched with a drum beating the rogue's march through all the streets of
the brigade to which his regiment was attached. Another officer tells me
of thus punishing a man who stole liquor. His barrel was ornamented with
bottles on either side simulating epaulets, and was labelled "I stole
whiskey." Many other instances might be given. There was usually no
military authority for these punishments, but they were simply ordered
in cases which seemed too petty for the formality of a court-martial.

This "barrel-shirt," which was evidently so frequently used in our Civil
War, was known as the Drunkard's Cloak, and it was largely employed in
past centuries on the Continent. Sir William Brereton, in his _Travels
in Holland_, 1634, notes its use in Delft; so does Pepys in the year
1660. Evelyn writes in 1641 that in the Senate House in Delft he saw "a
weighty vessel of woo