Chapter 8

In common with soldiers generally, the _ménu_ of our company was somewhat limited in variety, and the dishes served did not materially differ from day to day. Sunday, however, was an exception to this general rule when we were in camp. In accordance with the time-honored New England custom, on Sunday morning we had _our_ "baked beans." If we did not always remember to keep the Sabbath day holy, we certainly never forgot that it was the day for baked beans; and I sometimes thought that the appearance of that article of food on Sunday morning served us better than a Church calendar or the "Old Farmer's Almanac" could have done as a reminder how the day should be spent.

Our cook had a novel way of cooking or baking beans. He soaked them in the usual style, parboiled them in a large kettle, and then put them in a deep, iron mess-pan, generous slices of pork being placed on top of the beans. A hole was then made in the ground a foot or two feet deep and the bottom well filled with live coals, and on top of the coals was placed the iron mess-pan with its savory contents. Upon the cover of the pan was then placed more live coals, and the whole covered with turf well tamped down. This was done on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday morning the beans came out of their improvised oven piping hot and in no wise inferior to those which furnished the staple article of the Sunday morning meal in so many New England homes.

Burns tells us that "the well-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley." On one occasion it occurred that we encamped one Saturday afternoon on an old battlefield, and as it was known that we were to remain there over Sunday, our cook began the usual preliminary work whereby he was to furnish the company with baked beans on the following morning. It so happened that at the spot where the hole was dug in the ground an unexploded shell was buried a little farther down, and after the live coals and the bean pot had been deposited in the earth long enough to form a mutual acquaintance and become warm friends a loud explosion was heard, and immediately the beans took an upward tendency and the air was completely filled with them, confirming the assertion of Artemas Ward that the "festive bean, when baked, is a _very lively fruit_."

The spring of 1863 was particularly favorable to the development of typhoid fever, and a good many men in our regiment were in the hospital with that disease. The surgeon ordered a gill of whiskey to be served to every man daily, and as an inducement for him to "put it where it would do the most good"--at least in the surgeon's opinion--he was told that he would not be excused from duty if reported on the sick list. The whiskey was usually taken by the men and put into their canteens with the water, but in very many cases it did not take such a roundabout way in reaching its destination. In my "mess" was a good, orthodox, prohibitionist deacon, a man whose example I was told before leaving home that I could consistently follow in all things--especially in _spiritual_ things. One day he remarked to me that he had observed that I did not take my ration of whiskey when it was dealt out. I told him that I had not felt the need of it. He replied that he was very much afraid of the typhoid fever, and had no scruples in regard to the taking of a little whiskey as a precautionary measure, and if I was going to continue to refuse to take my ration of it, he wished I would let it be poured into my canteen, and he would turn it into his own when we got back to our quarters;--"only be careful," said he, "that there is no water in your canteen." After that I allowed the whiskey to be poured into my canteen; but the good deacon's argument as to its being a preventive for typhoid fever was so convincing that I did not allow it to be transferred to his.

As is well known, a wide and almost impassable gulf of difference exists between the officers and the rank and file in the regular army. But I had not been long in the volunteer service before I discovered that considerable difference existed even there between the private soldier and the officer. To illustrate. While in Suffolk there happened to be an "r" in the month. Walking along the principal street one day, I espied in the window of a restaurant a card, upon which was printed or painted in letters of large dimensions these two words: "STEAMED OYSTERS." Visions of Pawtucket and Providence river bivalves immediately came up before me, and I then and there resolved to have a good square meal of "steamed oysters," even though it should pecuniarily impoverish me. So, entering the restaurant, I seated myself upon one of the unoccupied high stools at the oyster bar. And here I will remark that I could not have felt the importance of my elevated position any more if my blouse had been covered with shoulder-straps. Presently the proprietor of the establishment presented himself, and eyeing me with an air of indifference almost amounting to contempt, he asked me what I wanted. I replied, "Steamed oysters." I confess I was somewhat surprised and considerably "down in the mouth" when he informed me that he couldn't sell steamed oysters to a private soldier. My suggestion that he might overcome the difficulty by _giving them to me_, failed to secure the much-coveted bivalves, and I retired from the restaurant a sadder but wiser man than when I entered it.

As I remarked at the outset, there was considerable difference between the private soldier and the officer even in the volunteer service; and this was, as I have shown, particularly true as to which one should eat steamed oysters. But the line had to be drawn somewhere, I suppose, and so at Suffolk they drew it at steamed oysters, and, unfortunately for the man who was serving his country at thirteen dollars a month, he "got left."