FOR a time we “fared sumptuously every day,” but there came a time when, owing to burned bridges and blockades, communication was entirely cut off with Cairo, Ill., which was our base of supplies, and the fare became very scant. For several days we had no coffee, but in some manner the landlord managed to secure 50 pounds, for which he paid $50.00.

On Christmas Day, 1862, our breakfast consisted of tea, bread, and pickled pigs’ feet; dinner the same with the addition of dried apple pie. In the afternoon we went, by invitation of Major Winn, to Bolivar, twenty-eight miles south of Jackson. I shall never forget the pleasure of that little war-time excursion. We stayed two hours and watched the boys in camp getting supper. One little fellow was making hash in a camp kettle near the railroad track where our train stood. He stirred it with a bayonet; it was very thin, and he said he didn’t know whether to call it hash or soup, but that he could thicken it with cotton, which was stacked up in great walls all about him. I can hear his merry, ringing laugh yet. My father’s regiment was in camp here, and we met his Colonel. That Colonel is now Brigadier General Wager Swayne, of New York city, and I often wonder if Gen. Swayne remembers that Christmas afternoon of 1862 as well as I do.

If the ride down to Bolivar was memorable, the return trip was even more so. There was supposed to be some danger of our train being fired into, and no lights were allowed. Part of the way lay through the woods, and our phantom train glided along in darkness and silence, for neither whistle was blown nor bell rung as we made the perilous little run through the enemy’s country. With a child’s confidence I knew and felt no fear. We arrived safely at the hotel at 8 p. m. and went immediately to the dining room, where we had some more pigs’ feet and dried apple pie. We didn’t hang up our stockings that Christmas Eve. There was nothing to put in them, unless it were minnie balls, and they were needed far worse in the muskets at that time.