Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1893-09-16

What was the matter? Didn't the
old soldiers treat him well? Didn't they
seem to yearn for his society" asked the
grocery man as the boy was making a
lunch on some sweet crackers in a tin
canister.
well, they were not very much
mashed on Pa. You see, Pa never gets
tired telling us about how he fit in the
army. For several years didn't know
what sutler was, and when Pa would
tell about taking a musket that a dead
soldier had dropped and going into the
thickest of the fight and fairly moving
down the Confederates in swaths the way
they cut hay thought he was the great
est man that ever was. Until l was II
years old l thought Pa had killed men
enough to fill the Forest Home cemetery.
/ thought sutler was something higher
than general, and Pa used to talk about
1 and Grant and what Sheridan told
him, and how Sherman marched with
him to the sea, and all that kind of rot,
until l wondered why they didn't have
pictures of Pa on white horse, with
epaulets on and sword. One day at
school l told boy that my Pa killed
more men than Grant, and the boy said
he didn't doubt it, but he killed them
with commissary whisky.
1.-The boy said his Pa was in the same
regiment that my Pa was sutler of, and
his Pa said my Pa charged him S. for
canteen of peppersauce and alcohol and
called it whisky. Then l began to in
quire into it and found out that sutler
was sort of liquid peanut stand, and
that his rank in the army was about
the same as a chestnut rooster on the
sidewalk here at home. 1t made me
sick, and l never had the same respect
for Pa after that. But Pa don't care.
He thinks he is hero and tried to get
pension on account of losing piece of
his thumb, but when the officers found
he was wounded by the explosion of a
can of baked beans they couldn't give
1t to him. Pa was down town when the
veterans were here and | was with him,
and l saw lot of old soldiers looking at
Pa, and told him they acted as though
they knew him, and he put on his glasses
and said to one of them, How are you,
Bill% The soldier looked at Pa and
lIiC otllu one Sdlll,
That's the old duffer that sold me the
bottle of brandy peaches at Chickamauga
for So, and they eat hole through my
stummick.'
Another said: He's the cuss that took
$40 out of my pay for pickles that were
put up in aqua FORTS. Look at the corps
badges he has on Another said: The
old whelp! He charged me so cents a
pound for onions when had the scurvy
at Atlanta Another said: He beat me
out of my wages playing draw poker
with a cold deck and the aces up his
sleeve. Let us hang him. BY this time
Pas nerves got unstrung and began to
hurt him, and he said he wanted to go
home, and when we got around the cor
ner he tore off his badges and threw them
in the sewer and said it was all mans
life was worth to be veteran nowadays.
He didn't go down town again till next
| day, and when he heard band playing
he would go around the block But at
the sham battle, where there were
| no veterans hardly, he was all right
with the militia boys, and l told them
how he did when he was in the army.
l thought it would be fun to see Pa
run, and so when one of the cavalry
| fellows lost his cap in the charge and
was looking for it l told the dragon
that the pussy old man over bxthe fence