The Funeral of the Colored Cook--I Plead for a Larger
Procession--The Funeral Oration--The Funeral Disturbed--I am
Arrested--My Fortunate Escape.

This last chapter of these celebrated war papers closed with me saddling
my mule to ride to the funeral of the colored cook, at which I was to
act as chaplain. The mule evidently knew that it was a solemn occasion,
for there was a mournful look on its otherwise placid face, the ears
drooped more than usual, and there seemed a sweet peace stealing over
the animal, which well became a funeral, until I began to buckle up the
saddle, when the long-eared brute began to paw and kick and bite, and it
took six men to get me into the saddle. I rode down the company street
where the cart stood with the remains, and a colored driver sitting on
the foot of the plain pine box, asleep. I woke the driver up with the
point of my saber, when another colored man came out of a tent with a
shovel in one hand, and a hardtack with a piece of bacon in the other.
He climbed into the cart, sat down on the coffin and began to eat his
dinner. This was my funeral. All that seemed necessary for a funeral was
a corpse, a driver of a cart, and a man with a shovel. I rode up to the
orderly's tent and asked him where the mourners were, and he laughed at
me. The idea of mourners seemed to be ridiculous. I had never, in all my
life, seen so slim a funeral, and it hurt me. In the meantime the nigger
with the shovel had woke up the driver of the cart, and he had followed
me, with the remains. I told them to halt the funeral right there, until
I could skirmish around and pick up mourners enough for a mess, and
a choir, and some bearers. As I rode away to the colonel's tent,
the driver of the cart and the man with the shovel were playing
"mumbleypeg," with a jack-knife, on the coffin, which shocked me very
much, as I was accustomed to living where more respect was paid to the
dead. I went to the colonel's tent and yelled "Say! The colonel, who was
changing his shirt, came to the door with his eyes full of soap, rubbing
his neck with a towel, and asked what was the row. I told him I would
like to have him detail me six bearers, seven or eight mourners, a few
singers, and fifteen or twenty men for a congregation. He asked me what
on earth I was talking about, and just then the cart with the corpse
in was driven up to where I was, the orderly having told the driver to
follow me with the late lamented. I