over many sheets of paper
before he got a letter that seemed only fairly satisfactory. One he had
rejected because of a big blot on it; second, because he thought he
had expressed himself too strongly; a third, because of an erasure and
unseemly correction; a fourth, because of some newborn suspicions about
the grammar and spelling, and so on. He thought, after he had carefully
gathered up all his failures and burned them, together with a number
of envelopes he had wrecked in his labor to direct one to Miss Lucinda
Briggs, Bad Ax, Wis., sufficiently neatly to satisfy his fastidious
taste.

He carefully folded his letter, creasing it with a very stalwart
thumb-nail, sealed it, gave it a long inspection, as he thought how much
it was carrying, and how far, and took it up to the Chaplain's tent to
be mailed.

Later in the afternoon a hilarious group was gathered under a large
cottonwood. It was made up of teamsters, Quartermaster's men, and other
bobtail of the camp, with the officers' servants forming the dark fringe
of an outer circle. Groundhog was the presiding spirit. By means best
known to himself he had become possessed of a jug of Commissary whisky,
and was dispensing it to his auditors in guarded drams to highten
their appreciation of his wit and humor. He had come across one of the
nearly-completed letters which Shorty had thrown aside and failed to
find when he burned the rest. Groundhog was now reading this aloud,
accompanied by running comments, to the great amusement of his auditors,
who felt that, drinking his whisky, and expecting more, they were bound
to laugh uproariously at anything he said was funny.

"Shorty, that lanky, two-fisted chump of Co. Q, who thinks hisself a
bigger man than Gineral Rosecrans," Groundhog explained, "has writ a
letter to a gal away off somewhere up North. How in the kingdom he ever
come to git acquainted with her or any respectable woman 's more'n I kin
tell. But he's got cheek enough for anything. It's sartin, though, that
she's never saw him, and don't know nothin' about him, or she'd
never let him write to her. Of course, he's as ignorant as a mule. He
skeercely got beyant pot-hooks when he wuz tryin' to larn writin', an'
he spells like a man with a wooden leg. Look here:

"'Mi Dere Frend.' Now, everybody knows that the way to spell dear is
d-e-e-r. Then he goes on:

"'I taik mi pen in hand to inform u that Ime well, tho I've lost about
15 pounds, and hoap that u air i