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Si's Load Begins to Get Heavy 023

Thenceforward everything seemed to conspire to teach Si how vain and superfluous were the things of this world. The first rain-storm soaked his cherished album until it fell to pieces, and his sister's portfolio did the same. He put the photographs in his blouse pocket and got along just as well. When he wanted to write he got paper from the sutler. A mule tramped on his fancy coffee-pot, and he found he could make quite as good coffee in a quart-cup. A wagon-wheel lan over his cherished frying-pan, and he melted an old canteen in two and made a lighter and handier pan out of one-half of it. He broke his bowie-knife prying the lid off a cracker-box. He piled his knapsack with the others one day when the regiment was ordered to strip them off for a charge, and neither he nor his comrades ever saw one of them again. He never attempted to replace it. He learned to roll up an extra pair of socks and a change of underclothing in his blanket, tie the ends of this together and throw it over his shoulder sash fashion. Then, with his socks drawn up over the bottoms of his pantaloons, three days' rations in his haversack and 40 rounds in his cartridgebox, he was ready to make his 30 miles a day in any direction he might be sent, and whip anything that he encountered on the road.

After the company wagon had run over and hopelessly ruined the neat little frying-pan which Si had brought from Posey County, he was in despair as to how he should fry his meat and cook his "lobscouse." Necessity is the mother of invention. He melted in two a canteen he picked up, and found its halves made two deep tin pans, very light and very handy. A split stick made a handle, and he had as good a frying-pan as the one he had lost, and much more convenient, for when done using the handle was thrown away, and the pan slipt into the haversack, where it lay snug and close, instead of clattering about as the frying-pan did when the regiment moved at the double-quick.

But there came a day when they had all they could attend to. On going into camp one afternoon, the regiment, well in advance, struck a big field of green corn and an orchard of half-ripe apples. Of course, the boys sailed in, and natural consequences followed.

"Ya-as" said Si; "she almost took the hide off sometimes, an' made me yell like an Injun."

"Now, Si," said Shorty, "don't ye git to fitin' rebels in yer sleep and kick the kiver off, as ye did last night."

All the members took a hand in the game. They just got right up and yelled, discharging at Si a volley of expletives and pointed remarks that drove him to desperation. Instinctively he brought up his gun.

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