“Not quite as meritorious a performance as capturing them in open fighting,” said Harry; “but then it's like hooking a fish in the side instead of catching him in the regular way by the mouth—he counts just the same.”
During their stay at Helena Harry and Jack made themselves useful in looking after the negroes that flocked there for protection, and they were sometimes derisively mentioned by their comrades as managers of the Freed-men's Bureau. But they took the satire good-naturedly and went on with their work, which consisted of aiding in the distribution of rations, making lists of the negroes as fast as they came in, assigning them to different parts of the camp, helping them to their free-papers, drafting out all who were able to work, and sending them to the levee to aid in unloading steamboats, or into the forests in the neighborhood of Helena, where they were employed to cut wood. At every opportunity they endeavored to instill into the negro-mind the idea that freedom did n't mean idleness, and insisted that the best way of making this fact understood was to put the negro at work, even if work had to be manufactured for him.
Consequently when there was nothing else to be done, Harry would take the negroes who were under his orders and set them to throwing up a fortification around the camp. When it was completed he pretended to wish to change something about it, and thus the earth of which it was composed was handled over several times in succession.
The last we saw of our young friends in the camp at Helena they were looking on and listening one Sunday evening when the negroes were having a religious meeting. Several negro preachers harangued the assemblage in their quaint and forcible way. Prayers were offered, and three or four hymns were sung with great fervor, all the congregation joining, and fairly making the woods ring with their voices.