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Updated: May 19, 2025
Mules braying, negroes yodling, axes ringing, teamsters singing, men shouting and howling, and all at nothing; mess-fires smoking all about in the same hap-hazard, but roomy, disorder in which the trees of the grove had grown; the railroad side lined with a motley crowd of jolly fellows in spurs, and the atmosphere between them and the line of heads in the car-windows murky with the interchange of compliments that flew back and forth from the "web-foots" to the "critter company," and from the "critter company" to the "web-foots."
The various mess-fires were surrounded by picturesque groups, standing, sitting, and reclining; some busied in cooking, others in cleaning their weapons: while the frequent laugh told that the rough joke or merry story was going on.
Anna, pacing her chamber, with every gesture of self-arraignment and distress, heard him gallop. Then standing in her opened window she looked off across the veranda's balustrade and down into the camp, where at lines of mess-fires like strings of burning beads the boys were cooking three days' rations. A tap came on her door. She snatched up a toilet brush: "Come in?"
To any of a hundred hostesses he would have been a joy, to share with as many friends as he would consent to meet; for in the last week he had eaten "hog and hominy," and sipped corn-meal coffee, in lofty colloquy with Sidney Johnston and his "big generals"; had talked confidentially with Polk, so lately his own bishop; had ridden through the miry streets of Corinth with all the New Orleans commanders of division or brigade Gibson, Trudeau, Ruggles, Brodnax; out on the parapets, between the guns, had chatted with Hilary and his loved lieutenants; down among the tents and mess-fires had given his pale hand, with Spartan injunctions and all the home news, to George Gregory, Ned Ferry, Dick Smith, and others of Harper's cavalry, and circled round by Charlie Valcour, Sam Gibbs, Maxime, and scores of their comrades in Kincaid's Battery had seen once more their silken flag, so faded! and touched its sacred stains and tatters.
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