The Spectator., 1916-02-04

lie down to sleep. stretched in long lines of any number of men. all cured up spoon fashion, as close together possible.
 lay down on the end of the line cold night when soon poor fellow came and snuggled up to me- Along in the early morning when he should have turned to warm my back. he did not move got up my elbow and pulled his He was dead. It was the most frightful experience ever had
 Our dead were usually relieved of any good clothing they may have had on to be used by those who were almost naked had still on what was left of a shirt and pair of drawers that had worn for almost year. Can you realize or i'm agine how little of either left? went down to the dead line one morning and saw body on which fine shirt of blue cashmere cloth. went to the gate and asked the officer of the Con- federate guard old man, if might remove the shirt from that body to wear myself
 My poor boy he said. and gave permission. with tears running down his wrinked cheeks. to take the shirt
 A red.whiskered spindleshanked. low-down fellow from Wisconsin that was chumming with. and whom I had kept alive by stealing grub for him to eat stole that shirt from me lost silver mine in Colorado years ago that sold afterwards for three hundred thousand dollars. but 1t did not hurt so badly the loss of that shirt.
 Shortly after this there was parole of sick and disabled men agreed on by the governments. got out and walked aboard transport at Sa vannah the raggedest-looking kid that ever left that city. What few troops there were in that transport just stood and cried when they saw our boys. This the nineteenth of November, 1864,
 At Annapolis got my back pay. ration money and clothing money for the time I had been pris oner. amounting to some $500, with furlough for thirty days. I started for Detroit l cant tell you all that happened on the trip, but l got home broke after a week or ten days on the road.
 Father killed the fatted calf. mother had 1t cooked and l made much of by everybody. aud thnx had preached a memorial sermon for me, telling what good little boy had been. l came home and spoiled it all. After few days at home went to dismounted camp at Harpers Ferry and from the camp was returned to my regiment then in Washington waiting to take part in the grand review, after which we were sent to Fort Leavenworth. Here l discharged and the regiment sent out on the plains after Indians.
 went to Denver in the fall of 1865 with mule train before there was railroad In the noun tains l returned to Topeka. Kan. with bull trains. enlisting in the regular army, went to Cali fornia by way of the isthmus. guarded surveyors in Arizona from the Indians. and fought Indians in Arizona with the First United States cavalry. l made trip into Mexico with load of phoney jewelry Later arrested flbuster spy in Guaymas and was shipwrecked my trip from Guaymas to Mazatlan. Two out of seven were saved after floating around for thirtysix hours l was shanghaied in San Francisco and taken around Cape Horn to Dublin which was the most adventurous five months of my life l came back to my home in 1873, married in 1874 and settled down to be decent.
 am now member of the Michigan Soldiers home Uncle Sam is trying his best to make me comfortable in my declining years. But neither he nor all the powers that be make up the ten years worse than lost from my twelfth to twerty-second year. for what did not learn that wss rough in that time have not learned since and it Is not in the books.