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As previously mentioned, our extra baggage and extra meant all save that worn on our backs had been left weeks before near the banks of the Rapidan, so that our apparel was now in sad plight. Dandridge had lost his little cadet-cap while on a night march, and supplied its place from the head of a dead Federal at Manassas, his hair still protruding freely, and burnt as "brown as a pretzel bun."

He was about sixteen and had just come from the Virginia Military Institute, where he had been sent to be kept out of the army. He wore a cadet-cap which came well over the eyes and nose, and left a mass of brown, curly hair unprotected on the back of his head. His joy at being "mustered in" was irrepressible.

He was clad in a dingy old coat, wore a discolored cadet-cap, tilted almost upon his nose, and rode a rawboned horse, with short stirrups, which raised his knees in the most ungraceful manner. Neither in his face nor figure was there the least indication of the great faculties of the man, and a more awkward-looking personage it would be impossible to imagine.

His dress was generally dingy: a faded cadet-cap tilted over his eyes, causing him to raise his chin into the air; his stirrups were apt to be too short, and his knees were thus elevated ungracefully, and he would amble along on his rawboned horse with a singularly absent-minded expression of countenance, raising, from time to time, his right hand and slapping his knee.