CHAPTER XVIII. NO PEACE FOR SI AND SHORTY
THE YOUNGSTERS KEEP THEM BUSY WHILE THE TRAIN MOVES SOUTH.
THE long fast had sharpened the zest the boys had for their first "soldier-breakfast." Until they got down to "real soldier-living" they could not feel that they were actually in the service. To have this formal initiation in the historic city of Nashville, far in the interior of the Southern Confederacy, was an exhiliarating event. The coarse fare became viands of rare appetency.
"Gracious, how good these beans taste," murmured Harry Joslyn, calling for a second plateful; "never knowed beans to taste so good before. Wonder how they cook 'em? We'll have to learn how, Gid, so's to cook 'em for ourselves, and when we git back home won't we astonish our mothers and sisters?"
"And sich coffee," echoed Gid. "I'll never drink cream in my coffee agin. I hadn't no idee cream spiled coffee so. Why, this coffee's the best stuff I ever drunk. Beats maple sap, or cider through a straw, all holler. That's good enough for boys. This 's what men and soldiers drink."
"You know those old gods and goddesses," put in Montmorency Scruggs, a pale, studious boy, for shortness called "Monty," and who had a great likeness for ancient history and expected to be a lawyer, "drunk what they called nectar. Maybe it was something like this."
"But we haven't had any hardtack yet," complained Albert Russell, a youth somewhat finicky as to dress, and who had ambitions of becoming a doctor. "They've only given us baker's bread, same as we got on the other side of the river, only better-tasting. Why don't they give us real soldier bread? I've heard Uncle Bob laugh at the 'soft-bread snoozers,' who never got near enough the front to know the taste of hardtack."
"Well, I'm going to eat all I can of it while I can get it," said little Pete Skidmore, the youngest and smallest of the lot, who had only passed the Mustering Officer by exhibiting such a vehement desire to enter the service as to make up for his probable lack of years and quite evident lack of inches. "I've heard Uncle Will say that he was always mighty glad to get back where he could get soft bread for a change, after he'd worn his grinders down to the quick chawing hardtack. It tastes awful good, anyway."
"The Government must pay big wages to the men it hires to do its cooking," philosophized Harry Joslyn, "same as it does to its lawyers and Congressmen and Generals. No common men could cook grub that way. Mebbe it took the cooks away from the Astor House and Delmonico's."