"Well, I do," was his response. "I tell you, Major, I wouldn't take five hundred dollars for my chance."
The distance to his home was over seven hundred miles, through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Northern Alabama.
The Major told me it was a common sight to see them trudging along, singing merrily, no doubt thinking of "Home, sweet home."
A Visit to the Outposts with Gen. Jeff C. Davis.
General Davis I found an active, intelligent gentleman, with an eye denoting great determination, and very pleasing in his conversational powers; always on the alert, leaving nothing to subordinates that he could do himself. The General's division commanded the Shelbyville pike. I spent two nights with Colonel Heg, who had a brigade occupying the most dangerous position. The 25th Illinois and 8th Kansas were in his brigade.
Colonel Heg's regiment is mostly composed of Norwegians, or Scandinavians. They are generally from, and are known as the 15th Wisconsin; are a splendid body of well-disciplined men, and all speak our language fluently. I heard an amusing anecdote of one of their captains, who, a short time since, took a lot of rebel prisoners. As this Norwegian captain had them drawn up in line, he said to them, in broken English, and in accent very like the German: "Say, you fellers, you putternuts, I vant you all to schwear a leetle. It do you goot to schwear mit de Constitution. I schwear him tree year ago; now you schwear him. Now, recollect, you schwear him goot; no d——n nonsense. You schwear him, and keep him down, and not puke him up again!"
The 24th Illinois are close at hand, also the 8th Kansas. These boys are in view of the rebels every day.
There is in the 24th Illinois Regiment a very clever officer who has an intolerably red nose. He says he can't "help it;" he strives to temper it, but it is no go. A friend inquired of him, how much it cost to color it out here; his reply was, "$2.50 a canteen."
The "rebs" played quite a trick upon the chaplain of the 24th Illinois. After they received his papers, they refused to send any in return. This would have been termed a nasty Yankee trick, had any of our boys committed such a breach of faith with them. But such is Southern honor.