I entered
his tent, and he showed it in his face. "What is the foolishness,
colonel? I asked. The boys are all guying me. Can't I stay a private?"

CHAPTER XVII.

Thanksgiving Dinner with the "Rebel Angel"--She Gives Me a
World of Good Advice--Can an Officer be Detailed To Go And
Shovel Dirt?--My First Day As A Commissioned Officer.

The last chapter of this history wound up in my interview with the
colonel, in which he told me that what the boys had said was true, and
that I had a right to to be called "Lieutenant." He said there was a
vacancy in the commissioned officers of my company, caused, by some
discrepancy in regard to the ownership of a horse which an officer had
sold as belonging to him, when investigation showed that there was
"U. S." branded on the horse. The colonel said he had looked over the
company pretty thoroughly, and while I was not all that he could desire
in an officer, there were less objections to me than to many others, and
he had recommended the governor of our state to commission me. He said
he didn't want me to run away with the idea that my promotion from
private to a commissioned office was for any particular gallantry, or
that I was particularly entitled to promotion, but I seemed the most
available. It was true, he said, that I had done everything I had been
told to do, in a cheerful manner, and had not displayed any cowardice,
that he knew of, though I had often admitted to him that I was a coward.
He said he thought few men knew whether they were cowards or not, until
they got in a tight place, and that most men honestly believed they were
cowards, but they didn't want others to know it, and they took pains to
conceal the fact. He said he had rather be considered a coward than a
dare-devil of bravery, for if he flunked when a chance come to show his
metal, it wouldn't be thought much of, and if he pulled through, and
made a decent record for bravery, he would get a heap of credit. He
said he believed it took a man with more nerve to do some things he
had ordered me to do, than it did to get behind a tree and shoot at the
enemy, and he was willing to take his chances on me. He congratulated
me, and some of the other officers did the same.

I was invited to sit into a game of draw poker with some of the
officers. I pleaded that I was not sufficiently recovered from my
sickness to play poker, and I went back to my tent to talk with Jim. I
was thinking over the ne