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Updated: June 8, 2025


I was a soldier in the war between the North and South, and have seen soldiers hungry, so hungry that they would take raw corn out of the nosebags of mules that were eating it, until a mule would begin to kick seven ways for Sunday when he saw a soldier coming; but it couldn't be helped, because the government couldn't keep up with the soldiers with rations, when they were on the jump night and day.

The front seat holds the driver; two ladies and two gentlemen fill up the two sides. The well contains ample space for the luggage of sensible people; umbrellas and waterproof capes can be strapped on the intermediate cushion, and then, if the horses are provided with military halters and nosebags, you are prepared for every eventuality.

The enemy's cavalry had given way, and our corps d'armée was free to pass the Marne by the bridge of Jaulgonne. The entire battalion of the advance guard then began to pour over the bridge on their way to the plateau. Our brigade was quickly got together, and our Chasseurs hastened to water their horses. Out came the nosebags from the saddlebags.

Meantime Toad packed the lockers still tighter with necessaries, and hung nosebags, nets of onions, bundles of hay, and baskets from the bottom of the cart. At last the horse was caught and harnessed, and they set off, all talking at once, each animal either trudging by the side of the cart or sitting on the shaft, as the humour took him. It was a golden afternoon.

The barrow of ginger beer stood, a queer derelict, black against the burning sky, and in the sand pits was a row of deserted vehicles with their horses feeding out of nosebags or pawing the ground. After the glimpse I had had of the Martians emerging from the cylinder in which they had come to the earth from their planet, a kind of fascination paralysed my actions.

The choughs are persistent followers of a Ski-ing party, flying over one's head and chirruping for lunch. When at last we stop and take our nosebags out of our Rucksacks, they perch on a cliff near and wait till we move on, when they immediately fly down to see what we have left for them.

I thought there were no neighbours, and when I came back late from having been all day in the forest, missing with an indifference that amazed Frau Bornsted the lure of her Sunday dinner, and taking some plum-cake and two Bibles with me, English and German, because I'm going to learn German that way among other ways while I'm here, and I think it's a very good way, and it immensely impressed Frau Bornsted to see me take two Bibles out for a walk, when I got back about five, untidy and hot and able to say off a whole psalm in perfect Lutheran German, I found several high yellow carriages, like the one I was fetched in on Saturday, in front of the paling, with nosebags and rugs on the horses, and indoors in the parlour a number of other foresters and their wives, besides Frau Bornsted's father and mother and younger sister, and the local doctor and his wife, and the Herr Lehrer, a tall young man in spectacles who teaches in the village school two miles away.

Even the most confirmed pessimist brightened up when we sighted one. Then there would be a searching in wallets for the very needful "feloos," and a careful scrutiny of nosebags to see if there were any holes large enough to allow one precious tin to escape. You would see a man staggering along with a nosebag slung across his shoulder and a wild look in his eye, while his lips mumbled incessantly.

He wished that some measure could be devised for superseding the use of nosebags, which he designated as an intolerable nuisance, especially during the summer months; but he principally relied for an improvement in condition on the prohibition of the mixture of chaff with oats; which latter article, he contended, was unfit for the use of able-bodied horses, who earned their daily food, and ought to be limited to those cattle who spent an idle existence in straw-yards.

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