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adjutant and the colonel, so I took a pen and filled out the blank. My idea was to put all the figures in the wrong column, which I did, and send it to the brigade headquarters. The next morning I went down town with the quartermaster, and got a suit of clothes to fit me, and on the way back to camp I passed brigade headquarters, when I saw our adjutant looking quite dejected. He called to me and said he had been summoned to brigade headquarters to explain some inaccuracies in the monthly report sent in the night before, and he wanted me to stay and see what was the trouble, but I acted as though if there was a mistake, it was an error of the head rather than of the feet. Pretty soon the old brigade adjutant, who was a strict diciplinarian, and a man who never heard of a joke, came in from the general's tent, with his brow corrugated. They had evidently been brooding over the report. "I beg your pardon, adjutant," said he, with a preoccupied look, "but in your report I observe that your regiment contains forty-three enlisted men, and nine hundred and twenty-six company cooks. This seems to me improbable, and the general cannot seem to understand it." The adjutant turned red in the face, and was about to stammer out something, when the adjutant general continued: "Again, we observe that your quartermaster has on hand nine hundred bales of condition powders, which is placed in your report as rations for the men, that you only have eleven horses in your regiment fit for duty, that you have the same number of men, while the commissioned officers foot up at nine hundred and twenty-six. Of your sick men there seems to be plenty, some eight hundred, which would indicate an epidemic, of which these headquarters had not been informed previously. In the column headed "officers detailed on other duty" I find four "six-mule teams," and one "spike team of five mules." In the column "officers absent without leave" I find the entry "all gone off on a drunk." This, sir, is the most incongruous report that has ever been received at these head-quarters, from a reputably sober officer. Can this affair be satisfactorily explained, at once, or would you prefer to explain it to a court-martial?" "Captain," said the adjutant in distress, and perspiring freely, "my clerk has made a mistake, and placed a piece of waste paper that has been scribbled on, in the envelope, instead of the regular report. Let me take it, and I will send the p
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