AN ARCTIC RIDE.
Transportation by rail was furnished only to the sick and barefooted, who were ordered to report at Corinth at daylight, Jan. 10th. Weakened by an attack of chill and fever I joined the sick squad, which left camp at 1 a. m., tramped through the mud and rain, waded several streams and reached Corinth in the early morning with our clothing wet to our knees. In this condition, with no opportunity to dry our drenched garments, we rode in a box car without fire on a cold winter day from 8 a. m. until 3 p. m. The car was crowded and the heating arrangements were confined to such exercise as we could take in the limited space we were forced to occupy. I had never been taught to "trip the light fantastic toe" and the figures I cut that day were more continuous than graceful. At 3 p. m. I told the Oglethorpes, who were with me, John Kirkpatrick and Will Dabney among them, I remember, that while I was willing to die in a soldierly way in battle, I did not propose to freeze to death, and suggested that in order to secure an opportunity to thaw, we stop at the next station, which chanced to be Baldwin, Miss. The motion was carried unanimously, though not by a rising vote, as we already occupied from necessity a standing position, our car having no furniture except a floor and a door. To give the reader some gauge of the condition of the railroads in that section at that stage of the war, it is only necessary to say that we had traveled only 31 miles in 7 hours. We were kindly received by a Mr. Kent, an old citizen of Baldwin, who regretted his inability to furnish us anything but shelter and fire, as he had been foraged upon by Yankees and Confederates alike until there was very little meal in the barrel or oil in the cruse and "no prophet in all the land to bless the scanty store." When the evening meal was ready, however, he came to our room and with an apology to my comrades for failing to include them in the invitation, he pressed the writer to share his humble fare. Whether this discrimination in my favor was due to my good looks, my winning ways or the appearance of chronic hunger in my face, has remained to this day an unsolved problem. And yet whatever may have been the right solution, it gives me pleasure through this humble record to waft back over the waste of years my earnest appreciation of his kindness to a sick and underfed Confederate.