We all pitched in with a whoop. In ten minutes after the top was off, there was not a thing left in that box except one skin of sausage which I saved for our mess next morning. You can imagine how the boys did enjoy it. It was a bully way to end up that hungry Christmas Day. I wrote my thanks and the thanks of all the boys to my mother and sisters, who had packed that box, and I described the scene as I have here described it, which made them realize how welcome and acceptable their kind present was--and what comfort and pleasure it gave--all the more that it came to us on Christmas Day, and made it a joyful one--at the end, at least. In regard to all this low diet from which we suffered so much hunger that winter--it is well worthy of remark that the health of the army was never better. At one time that winter there were only 300 men in hospital from the whole Army of Northern Virginia--which seems to suggest that humans don't need as much to eat as they think they do. That army was very hungry, but it was very healthy! It looks like cause and effect! But it was a very painful way of keeping healthy. I fear we would not have taken that tonic, if we could have helped it, but we couldn't! Maybe it was best as it was. Let us hope so! Well, the winter wore on in this regular way until the 3d or 4th of February, when our quiet was suddenly disturbed in a most unexpected manner. Right in the dead of a stormy winter, when nobody looked for any military move--we had a fight. The enemy got "funny" and we had to bring him to a more serious state of mind, and teach him how wrong it was to disturb the repose of gentlemen when they were not looking for it, and not doing anything to anybody--just trying to be happy, and peaceable if they could get a chance. =Confederate Fashion Plates= Leading up to an account of this, I may mention some circumstances in the way of the boys in the camp. Living the hard life, we were--one would suppose that fashion was not in all our thoughts; but even then, we felt the call of fashion and followed it in such lines, as were open to us. The instinct to "do as the other fellow does" is implanted in humans by nature; this blind impulse explains many things that otherwise were inexplicable. With the ladies it makes many of them wear hats and dresses that make them look like hoboes and guys, and shoes that make them walk about as gracefully as a cow in a blanket, instead of looking, and moving like the young, graceful gazelles--that nature meant, and men want them to look like. Taste and grace and modesty go for nothing--when fashion calls. Well, the blind impulse that affects the ladies so--moved us in regard to the patches put on the seats of our pants. This was the only particular in which we could depart from the monotony of our quiet, simple, gray uniform--which consisted of a jacket, and pants and did not lend itself to much variety; but fashion found a way.