Dere Miss Maria Klegg:
"I talk mi pen in hand to inform you that our walkin'-papers has at last come, and we start termorrer mornin' for Buzzard Roost to settle jest whose to rool that roost. Our ideas and Mister Jo Johnston's differ on that subjeck. When we git through with him hele no more, though he probably won't be so purty as he is now."
He stopped to rest after this prodigious literary effort, and wipe the beaded sweat from his brow. He saw little Pete Skidmore looking at him with troubled face.
"What're you doin' up, Pete? Lay down and go to sleep."
"Say, Corpril, the Orderly said we wuz goin' to fight a whole passel of rebel cavalry, didn't he?"
"Um-hum!" assented Shorty, cudgeling his brain as to what he should next write.
"Them's them awful kind o' rebels, ain't they—the John Morgan kind—that ride big horses that snort fire, and they have long swords, with which they chop men's heads off?"
"A lot o' yellin', gallopin' riff-raff," said Shorty, with the usual contempt of an infantryman for cavalry. "Ain't worth the fodder their bosses eat."