ny time.
Something happened that I was unable to be present the first
forenoon that clothing was issued, and, when I did call upon the
quartermaster-sergeant, there was only two or three suits left, and they
had been tumbled over till they looked bad. I can remember now how my
heart sank within me, as I picked up a pair of pants that was left. They
were evidently cut out with a buzz-saw, and were made for a man that
weighed three hundred. I held them up in installments, and looked at
them. Holding them by the top, as high as I could, and the bottom of the
legs of the pants laid on the ground. The sergeant charged the pants to
my account, and then handed me a jacket, a small one, evidently made
for a hump-backed dwarf. The jacket was covered with yellow braid. O, so
yellow, that it made me sick. The jacket was charged to me, also. Then
he handed me some undershirts and drawers, so coarse and rough that
it seemed to me they must have been made of rope, and lined with
sand-paper. Then came an overcoat, big enough for an equestrian statue
of George Washington, with a cape on it as big as a wall tent. The hat I
drew was a stiff, cheap, shoddy hat, as high as a tin camp kettle, which
was to take the place of my nobby, soft felt hat that I had paid five
dollars of my bounty money for. The hat was four sizes too large for me.
Then I took the last pair of army shoes there was, and they weighed as
much as a pair of anvils, and had raw-hide strings to fasten them with.
Has any old soldier of the army ever forgotten the clothing that he drew
from the quartermaster? These inverted pots for hats, the same size all
the way up, and the shoes that seemed to be made of sole leather, and
which scraped the skin off the ankles. O, if this government ever does
go to Gehenna, as some people contend it will, sometime, it will be as
a penalty for issuing such ill-fitting shoddy clothing to its brave
soldiers, who never did the government any harm. I carried the lot of
clothing to my tent, feeling sick and faint. The idea of wearing them
among folks was almost more than I could bear to think of. I laid them
on my bunk, and looked at them, and "died right there." That hat was
of a style older than Methuselah. O, I could have stood it, all but the
hat, and pants, and shoes, but they killed me. While I was looking at
the lay-out, and trying to make myself believe that my old clothes that
I brought with me were good enough to last till the war was ove