"THEM MOLASSES."
During our stay at Jacksboro the farmers in that section were making sorghum syrup, which most of them called "them molasses." Near one of our picket posts lived a Baptist minister named Lindsay, from whose better half we purchased vegetables and other edibles. On one occasion I was unable to make exact change and left owing her 12 1-2 cents in Confederate money. Two weeks later I was on picket again and paid her the balance due. She was so much surprised that a soldier should have the moral sense to recognize and meet such an obligation that she formed a very exalted estimate of my honesty and when I afterwards went to buy some of "them molasses" she requested her husband to take it from a barrel she had reserved for her own use "for," he said "she likes 'em powerful thick." I had occasion to regret her kindness, for it was so thick that it was with difficulty that I could get it either into or out of my canteen, and in view of her partiality I did not have the heart to suggest that a thinner grade would be preferred. She was a kind and motherly soul, and yet some of the soldiers would steal from her. To prevent or minimize their depredations she cooped a noisy rooster underneath her bedroom as a sort of watch dog to notify her of any midnight foragers. A few mornings afterwards she awoke to find, aside from other losses, that her feathered sentinel had been caught asleep upon his post by some soldier, who was chicken-mouthed, if he was not chicken-hearted.