mmand, march, I started for the center.

I had got almost past my own company, and there had been no general
laugh, but when I passed an Irishman, named Mulcahy, I heard him whisper
out loud to the man next to him, "Howly Jasus, luk at the pants." Then
there was a snicker all through the company, which was taken up by the
next, and by the time I got to the center, and "front faced," a half of
the regiment were laughing, and the officers were scolding the men and
whispering to them to shut up. Just then I felt that the one hand that
was trying to hold the pants up, was never going to do the work in the
world, so I dropped my carbine behind me, said, "Co. E, all present or
accounted for," and stood there like a stoughton bottle, holding the
waist-band of those pants with both hands, as pale as a ghost. I could
see that the adjutant and the colonel and two majors, were laughing, and
many of the visitors were trying to keep from laughing. I think I lived
seventy years in five minutes, while the other eleven orderlies were
reporting, and when the order came to return to our posts, I whispered
to the next orderly to me, and told him if he would pick up my carbine
and bring it along, I would die for him, and he picked it up. The dress
parade was soon finished, but instead of marching the companies back to
their quarters, they were ordered to break ranks on the parade ground,
and for an hour I was surrounded with officers and men, who laughed at
me till I thought I would die.

The colonel and adjutant finally told me that it was a put up job on me,
to make a little fun for the boys. They said I had often had fun at the
expense of the other boys, and they wanted to see if I could stand a
joke on myself, and they admitted that I had done it well. If I had
known it was a joke, I could have lived through it better. The adjutant
said he had got a little work for me that evening, and the next morning
I could take my clothes down town to the post quartermaster, and
exchange them for a suit that would fit me. I went to his tent, and
he showed me a lot of company reports, and wanted me to make out a
consolidated monthly report, for the assistant adjutant general of the
brigade. I had done some work for him before, and he left a blank signed
by himself and colonel, and told me to make out a report and send it
to the brigade headquarters, as he was going down town with a party of
officers. I made up my mind that I would get even with the