other circumstances. There was no running,
boxing, jumping, wrestling, leaping, etc. All were too weak and hungry
to make any exertion beyond that absolutely necessary. On cold days
everybody seemed totally benumbed. The camp would be silent and still.
Little groups everywhere hovered for hours, moody and sullen, over
diminutive, flickering fires, made with one poor handful of splinters.
When the sun shone, more activity was visible. Boys wandered around,
hunted up their friends, and saw what gaps death--always busiest during
the cold spells--had made in the ranks of their acquaintances. During
the warmest part of the day everybody disrobed, and spent an hour or more
killing the lice that had waxed and multiplied to grievous proportions
during the few days of comparative immunity.

Besides the whipping of the Galvanized by the darkies, I remember but two
other bits of amusement we had while at Florence. One of these was in
hearing the colored soldiers sing patriotic songs, which they did with
great gusto when the weather became mild. The other was the antics of a
circus clown--a member, I believe, of a Connecticut or a New York
regiment, who, on the rare occasions when we were feeling not exactly
well so much as simply better than we had been, would give us an hour or
two of recitations of the drolleries with which he was wont to set the
crowded canvas in a roar. One of his happiest efforts, I remember, was a
stilted paraphrase of "Old Uncle Ned" a song very popular a quarter of a
century ago, and which ran something like this:

There was an old darky, an' his name was Uncle Ned,
But he died long ago, long ago
He had no wool on de top of his head,
De place whar de wool ought to grouw.

CHORUS
Den lay down de shubel an' de hoe,
Den hang up de fiddle an' de bow;
For dere's no more hard work for poor Uncle Ned
He's gone whar de good niggahs go.

His fingers war long, like de cane in de brake,
And his eyes war too dim for to see;
He had no teeth to eat de corn cake,
So he had to let de corn cake be.

CHORUS.

His legs were so bowed dat he couldn't lie still.
An' he had no nails on his toes;

His neck was so crooked dot he couldn't take a pill,
So he had to take a pill through his nose.

CHORUS.

One cold frosty morning old Uncle Ned died,
An' de tears ran down massa's cheek like rain,
For he knew when Uncle Ned was laid in de grou