On Christmas Day, 1862, our breakfast consisted of tea, bread, and pickled pigs’ feet; dinner the same with the addition of dried apple pie. In the afternoon we went, by invitation of Major Winn, to Bolivar, twenty-eight miles south of Jackson. I shall never forget the pleasure of that little war-time excursion. We stayed two hours and watched the boys in camp getting supper. One little fellow was making hash in a camp kettle near the railroad track where our train stood. He stirred it with a bayonet; it was very thin, and he said he didn’t know whether to call it hash or soup, but that he could thicken it with cotton, which was stacked up in great walls all about him. I can hear his merry, ringing laugh yet. My father’s regiment was in camp here, and we met his Colonel. That Colonel is now Brigadier General Wager Swayne, of New York city, and I often wonder if Gen. Swayne remembers that Christmas afternoon of 1862 as well as I do. If the ride down to Bolivar was memorable, the return trip was even more so. There was supposed to be some danger of our train being fired into, and no lights were allowed. Part of the way lay through the woods, and our phantom train glided along in darkness and silence, for neither whistle was blown nor bell rung as we made the perilous little run through the enemy’s country. With a child’s confidence I knew and felt no fear. We arrived safely at the hotel at 8 p. m. and went immediately to the dining room, where we had some more pigs’ feet and dried apple pie. We didn’t hang up our stockings that Christmas Eve. There was nothing to put in them, unless it were minnie balls, and they were needed far worse in the muskets at that time. THE DINING ROOM IN the large dining room of the hotel were eight tables, and there was a black waiter for each table. We ate at what was known as the Colonel’s table, and Tom was our waiter. He was as black as the “ace of spades,” but the very pink of politeness. I became so familiar with his “formula” or bill of fare, that I can repeat it now. In times of plenty it was, “Roast beef, roast pork, co’n beef, or meat pie.” Also, “beef-steak or po’k-steak.” If one chose the former, Tom would ask, “Well done or rare?” Many times there was such a rush for the dining room that it almost amounted to a mob, and both doors leading into it were kept locked. Several trains arrived at noon, and emptied themselves of passengers into the Manassas House, and many times a lot of hungry soldiers came pouring in just as dinner was ready. On one occasion a revolver was fired in the mad rush for entrance. The regular boarders were instructed to knock at the rear door, and my timid little tap was responded to as promptly as that of the wearer of gold cord and glittering shoulder straps. INMATES AND INCIDENTS