t. The chaplain went out, when a drummer
for a tailor shop came in with some samples, and wanted to make up a new
uniform for me, regardless of expense. I stood him off, and went to bed,
tired, and thought I had rather be a private than a general. The next
morning it was my turn to cook our breakfast, and I turned out and built
a fire, cut off some salt pork, and was frying it, when the orderly
sergeant came along and detailed Jim and me, with ten or a dozen others
to go to work on the fortifications. The rebels-were preparing to attack
our position, and the commanding officer had deemed it advisable to
throw up some earthworks. I told the orderly that he couldn't detail me
to work with a shovel, digging trenches, when I was an officer, but he
said he could, until I received my commission and was mustered in. I
left my cooking and went to the colonel's tent. He was just rolling out
of his bunk, and I said:

"How is it, Colonel? Can an officer be detailed to go and shovel dirt? I
have been detailed by the orderly, with a lot of privates, to report
to the engineer, to throw up fortifications. That does not strike me as
proper work for a commissioned officer."

"You will have to go," said the colonel, as he stood on one leg while he
tried to lasso his other foot with a pants leg. "It may be three months
before your commission will arrive, and then you will have to go to New
Orleans to be mustered out as a private and mustered in as an officer.
Until that time you will have to do duty as a private."

"Then what the devil did you say anything about my being commissioned
for, until the commission got here," said I, and I went back and
finished cooking breakfast for myself and Jim.

Our detail went down to the river, at the left of the line, and reported
to the engineer, and were set to work cutting down trees, throwing up
dirt, and doing about the dirtiest and hardest work that I had ever
done. As a private I could have done anything that was asked of me,
but the thought of doing such work, while all the boys were calling me
"Lieutenant," was too much. I never was so crushed in my life. How glad
I was that I did not buy that gilt-edged saber of the chaplain. We had
to wear our side arms while at work, fearing an attack at any
minute, and I thought how ridiculous I would have looked with that
silver-mounted saber hanging to me, while I was handling a shovel like a
railroad laborer. If that detail was made to humiliate me, a