planning for the good dinner that was in prospect. There were
many steamboats lying at the Landing, I selected one that looked
inviting, went on board, and sauntered aft to the cook's quarters. It
was near dinner time, and the grub dispenser was in the act of taking
from his oven a number of nice cakes of corn bread. I sidled up to him,
and displaying that dime the cavalryman gave me for those apples, asked
him in a discreetly low tone, if he would let me have a cake of corn
bread. He gave a friendly grin, pushed a cake towards me, I slipped it
in my haversack, and handed him the dime. Now I was fixed. I went
ashore, and down the river for a short distance to a spring I knew of,
that bubbled from the ground near the foot of a big beech tree. It did
not take long to build a little fire and make coffee in my oyster can of
a quart's capacity, with a wire bale attachment. Then a slice of
sow-belly was toasted on a stick, the outer skin of the onions
removed--and dinner was ready. Talk about your gastronomic feasts! I
doubt if ever in my life I enjoyed a meal better than this one, under
that old beech, by the Tennessee river. The onions were big red ones,
and fearfully strong, but my system craved them so much that I just
chomped them down as if they were apples. And every crumb of the corn
bread was eaten, too. Dinner over, I felt better, and roamed around the
rest of the afternoon, sight-seeing, and didn't get back to camp till
nearly sundown. By the way, that spring and that beech tree are there
yet, or were in October, 1914, when I visited the Shiloh battlefield. I
hunted them up on this occasion and laid down on the ground and took a
long, big drink out of the spring for the sake of old times.

Taking up again the thread of our life in camp at Owl creek, I will say
that when there I was for a while in bad physical condition, and nearly
"all in." One day I accidentally overheard two intelligent boys of my
company talking about me, and one said, "If Stillwell aint sent north
purty soon, he's goin' to make a die of it;" to which the other
assented. That scared me good, and set me to thinking. I had no use for
the hospital, wouldn't go there, and abominated the idea of taking
medicine. But I was so bad off I was not marked for duty, my time was
all my own, so I concluded to get out of camp as much as possible, and
take long walks in the big woods. I found a place down on the creek
between two picket posts where it was easy