Usefulness of a tin can.
Soon after the
Texans passed we were all astir and our bivouac was at an end. We made our simple toilets, consisting mainly of putting on our hats and saddling our horses.
We then proceeded to look for something to satisfy our now ravenous appetites.
Somebody had a little
corn meal, and somebody else had a tin can, such as is used to hold hot water for shaving.
A fire was kindled, and each man in his turn, according to rank and seniority, made a can of
corn-meal gruel, and was allowed to keep the can until the gruel became cool enough to drink.
General Lee, who reposed as we had done, not far from us, did not, as I remember, have even such a refreshment as I have described.
This was our last meal in the
Confederacy.
Our next was taken in the
United States, and consisted mainly of a generous portion of that noble American animal whose strained relations with the great chancellor of the German empire made it necessary at last for the
President of the
United States to send an Ohio man to the court of
Berlin.
