"What regiment do you belong to?"
"Sixth Ohio."
"Well, get back to your camp, quick!"
The boys, although they knew him well, took advantage of the fact that the General displayed no insignia of his rank, and replied:
"They guessed they'd go down the road a bit, first."
"Come back! come back!" shouted the General. "How dare you disobey me? Do you know who I am, you scoundrels?"
"No, I don't," said one of the boys; and then, looking impudently and inquiringly into his face, said: "Why! ain't you the wagon-master of the 17th Indiana?"
Nelson thought activity the best cure for "ennui," and consequently kept his men busy. One day, calling his officers together, he ordered them to prepare immediately for a regular, old-fashioned day's work; "for," said he, "there has been so little work done here since the rain set in, that I fear drilling has fallen in the market; but if we succeed in keeping up that article, I am sure cotton must come down."
He was exceedingly bitter in his denunciations of the London Times and rebel British sympathizers, remarking to me, one evening, that he was exceedingly anxious this war should speedily end, "for," said he, "I would like nothing better than to see our people once more united as a nation; and then I want fifty thousand men at my command, so that I could march them to Canada, and go through those provinces like a dose of croton."
I was present at the Galt House, in Louisville, when General Nelson was shot by General Davis, and immediately telegraphed the sad news to the daily press of Cincinnati. The following was my dispatch: