"Hello there, Johnny Reb! What are you making all that fuss about over there?"
Our men were leaning forward for the start, and General Gordon was for a moment disconcerted; but a rifleman answered in a cheerful voice:—
"Oh, never mind us, Yank! Lie down and go to sleep! We are just gathering a little corn; you know rations are mighty short over here!"
There was a patch of corn between the lines, some still hanging on the stalks. After a few moments there came back the kindly reply of the Yankee picket:—
"All right, Johnny, go ahead and get your corn. I won't shoot at you."
General Gordon was about to give the command to go forward, when the rifleman showed some compunctions of conscience for having used deception which might result in the picket's death, by calling out loudly:—
"Look out for yourself now, Yank! We're going to shell the woods."
Such exhibitions of true kindness and comradeship were not uncommon during the war.
On a hill a short distance off was the farmhouse of "old Billy Green," as he was known to his neighbors. He had a good wife, kind to me and to everybody, and a fine-looking, amiable daughter, Nannie Green. These were my only female acquaintances. Nannie soon became an out-and-out belle—the only young lady in the neighborhood. Tender songs were paraphrased in her honor; Ben Bolt's Sweet Alice became "Sweet Nannie," and "Sweet Annie of the Vale" easily became "Sweet Nannie of the Hill." I was very stern with the young officers around me, about Nannie Green. She was a modest, dignified girl, and I did not intend to have her spoiled, nor her father ridiculed.
I found some cut-glass champagne glasses in one of my boxes. Every night a request would come from Captain Lindsay, or Captain Glover, or some other of my staff tenants, for a champagne glass. At last I asked:—