"Hello, fellows! what do you think of this? Now just look here, will you!" exclaimed Pointer Donachy, the tallest man in the company, as he came out of his tent in a pair of pantaloons that were little more than knee-breeches for him, and began to parade the street with a tent-pole for a musket. "How in the name of the American eagle is a man going to fight the battles of his country in such a uniform as this? Seems to me that Uncle Sam must be a little short of cloth, boys."
"Brother Jonathan generally dresses in tights, you know," said some one.
"Ah," said Andy, "Pointer's uniform reminds one of what the poet says,—
"'Man needs but little here below,
Nor needs that little long.'"
"You're rather poor at quoting poetry, Andy," answered Pointer, "because I need more than a little here below: I need at least six inches."
But the shoes! Coarse, broad-soled, low-heeled "gunboats," as we afterward learned to call them—what a time there was getting into them. Here came one fellow down the street with shoes so big that they could scarcely be kept on his feet, while over yonder another tugged and pulled and kicked himself red in the face over a pair that would not go on. But by trading off, the large men gradually got the large garments and the little men the small, so that in a few days we were all pretty well suited.
I remember hearing about one poor fellow in another company, a great strapping six-footer, who could not be suited. The largest shoe furnished by the Government was quite too small. The giant tried his best to force his foot in, but in vain. His comrades gathered about him, and laughed, and chaffed him unmercifully, whereupon he exclaimed,—
"Why, you don't think they are all boys that come to the army, do you? A man like me needs a man's shoe, not a baby's."
There was another poor fellow, a very small man, who had received a very large pair of shoes, and had not yet been able to effect any exchange. One day the sergeant was drilling the company on the facings—Right-face, Left-face, Right-about-face—and of course watched his men's feet closely, to see that they went through the movements promptly. Observing one pair of feet down the line that never budged at the command, the sergeant, with drawn sword, rushed up to the possessor of them, and in menacing tones demanded,—