STEED AND THE SUGAR
My friend's penchant for pie may have had its influence in the origin of a problem in the company, which like the squaring of the circle has never received a satisfactory solution. He held during his term of service the office of commissary sergeant for the company, a position in which it was difficult at any time and impossible when rations were scarce, to give entire satisfaction. These difficulties in his case were, perhaps, enhanced by the peculiarities of his poetic temperament, which caused him to live among the stars and gave him a distaste for the bread and meat side of life, except possibly as to pie. Try as faithfully as he would to show strict impartiality in the distribution, there was sometimes a dim suspicion that the bone in the beef fell oftener to other messes than his own and that the scanty rations of sugar issued weekly were heaped a little higher when his mess had in contemplation a pie or pudding on the following day. These suspicions finally culminated in an inquiry, which became a proverb of daily use; an inquiry, which formed the concluding argument in every camp discussion, whether on a disputed point in military tactics or on the reconciliation of geological revelation with the Mosaic cosmogony; an inquiry with which Jim McLaughlin and Jim Fleming still salute their former commissary: "What has that to do with Steed and the sugar?"
Of course there was never any foundation for such a feeling and probably never any real suspicion of favoritism in the matter. These things formed the minor key of our soldier life and served as they were intended, to enliven its sometimes dull monotony. My friend, and I am glad to have been honored so long by his friendship, will pardon, I know, in the gentleness of his heart a revival of these memories. Aside from the faithful discharge of the difficult duties of his position, it gives me pleasure to add my willing testimony to the silent witness of his armless sleeve, that on the firing line and in all the sphere of duty, to which the service called him, he was every inch a soldier.