Price managed to subsist an army without governmental resources. His men were never demoralized for the want of food, pay or clothing, and were always cheerful, and frequently danced 'round their camp-fires, bare-footed and ragged, with a spirit of merriment that would put the blush upon the cheek of a circus. Gen. Price wore nothing upon his shoulders but a brown linen duster, and, his white hair streaming in the breeze on the field of battle, was a picture resembling the _war-god_ of the Romans in ancient fable. * The so called battle of Boonville was a rash venture of citizens, not under the command of Gen. Price at the time. This army of ragged heroes marched over eight hundred miles on Missouri soil, and seldom passed a week without an engagement of some kind--it was confined to no particular line of operations, but fought the enemy wherever they found him. It had started on the campaign without a dollar, without a wagon, without a cartridge, and without a bayonet-gun; and when it was called east of the Mississippi river, it possessed about eight thousand bayonet-guns, fifty pieces of cannon, and four hundred tents, taken almost exclusively from the Federals, on the hard-fought fields of battle. When this army crossed the Mississippi river the star of its glory had set never to rise again. The invigorating name of _state rights_ was _merged_ in the Southern Confederacy. With this prelude to surrounding circumstances, we will now follow the fortunes of Cousin Cæsar. Enured to hardships in early life, possessing a penetrating mind and a selfish disposition, Cousin Cæsar was ever ready to float on the stream of prosperity, with triumphant banners, or go down as _drift wood_. And whatever he may have lacked in manhood, he was as brave as a lion on the battle-field; and the campaign of Gen. Price in Missouri suited no private soldier better than Cæsar Simon. Like all soldiers in an active army, he thought only of battle and amusement. Consequently, the will, Gov. Morock and the Simon estate occupied but little of Cousin Cæsar's reflections. One idea had taken possession of him, and that was southern victory. He enjoyed the triumphs of his fellow soldiers, and ate his roasting ears with the same invigorating spirit. A sober second thought and cool reflections only come with the struggle for his own life, and with it a self-reproach that always, sooner or later, overtakes the faithless. The battle of Oak Hill, usually called the battle of Springfield, was one of the hardest battles fought west of the Mississippi river. The federal troops, under Gen. Lyon, amounted to nearly ten thousand men. The confederate t oops, under Generals McCulloch, Price, and Pearce, were about eleven thousand men.