nd buzzards were sailing around them or perched in
their tops, cawing and croaking, and thereby augmenting the woe-begone
looks of things. The planter himself was of a type then common in the
South. He was a large, coarse looking man, with an immense paunch, wore
a broad-brimmed, home-made straw hat and butter nut jeans clothes. His
trousers were of the old-fashioned, "broad-fall" pattern. His hair was
long, he had a scraggy, sandy beard, and chewed "long green" tobacco
continually and viciously. But he was shrewd enough to know that ugly
talk on his part wouldn't mend matters, but only make them worse, so he
stood around in silence while we took his corn, but he looked as
malignant as a rattlesnake. His wife was directly his opposite in
appearance and demeanor. She was tall, thin, and bony, with reddish
hair and a sharp nose and chin. And goodness, but she had a temper! She
stood in the door of the dwelling house, and just tongue-lashed us
"Yankees," as she called us, to the full extent of her ability. The
boys took it all good naturedly, and didn't jaw back. We couldn't
afford to quarrel with a woman. A year later, the result of her abuse
would have been the stripping of the farm of every hog and head of
poultry on it, but at this time the orders were strict against
indiscriminate, individual foraging, and except one or two bee-stands
full of honey, nothing was taken but the corn. And I have no doubt that
long ere this the Government has paid that planter, or his heirs, a
top-notch price for everything we took. It seems to be easy,
now-a-days, to get a special Act through Congress, making "full
compensation" in cases of that kind.

Not long after the foregoing expedition, I witnessed a somewhat amusing
incident one night on the picket line. One day, for some reason, the
regiment was required, in addition to the railroad guards, to furnish a
number of men for picket duty. First Lieut. Sam T. Carrico, of Co. B,
was the officer, and it fell to my lot to be the sergeant of the guard.
We picketed a section of the line a mile or so southwest of Bolivar,
and the headquarters post, where the lieutenant and the sergeant of the
guard stayed, was at a point on a main traveled road running southwest
from the town. It was in the latter part of October, and the night was
a bad and cold one. Lieut. Carrico and I had "doubled up," spread one
of our blankets on the ground, and with the other drawn over us, were
lying down and trying t