thought of a young divine who preached
it when first entering the ministry, and in about twenty years came back,
and happening to preach from the same text again, an old fellow in
the congregation said, "Mr. Preacher, ain't that old woman dead yet?"
Well, that was the text that was preached to us soldiers one Sunday at
Chattanooga. I could not help thinking all the time, "Ain't that old
woman dead yet?" But he announced that he would preach again at 3
o'clock. We went to hear him preach at 3 o'clock, as his sermon was
so interesting about "Peter's wife's mother lay sick of a fever." We
thought, maybe it was a sort of sickly subject, and he would liven us
up a little in the afternoon service.

Well, he took his text, drawled out through his nose like "small
sweetness long drawn out:" "M-a-r-t-h-a, thou art w-e-a-r-i-e-d and
troubled about many things, but M-a-r-y hath chosen that good part that
shall never be taken from her." Well, you see, O gentle and fair reader,
that I remember the text these long gone twenty years. I do not remember
what he preached about, but I remember thinking that he was a great
ladies' man, at any rate, and whenever I see a man who loves and respects
the ladies, I think him a good man.

The next sermon was on the same sort of a text: "And the Lord God caused
a deep sleep to fall on Adam and took out of"--he stopped here and said
_e_ meant out of, that _e_, being translated from the Latin and Greek,
meant out of, and took _e_, or rather out of a rib and formed woman.
I never did know why he expaciated so largely on _e_; don't understand it
yet, but you see, reader mine, that I remember but the little things that
happened in that stormy epoch. I remember the _e_ part of the sermon
more distinctly than all of his profound eruditions of theology, dogmas,
creeds and evidences of Christianity, and I only write at this time from
memory of things that happened twenty years ago.

"OUT A LARKING"

At this place, we took Walter Hood out "a larking." The way to go "a
larking" is this: Get an empty meal bag and about a dozen men and go to
some dark forest or open field on some cold, dark, frosty or rainy night,
about five miles from camp. Get someone who does not understand the game
to hold the bag in as stooping and cramped a position as is possible,
to keep perfectly still and quiet, and when he has got in the right fix,
the others to go off to drive in the larks. As soon as they get out o