Later in the afternoon a hilarious group was gathered under a large cottonwood. It was made up of teamsters, Quartermaster's men, and other bobtail of the camp, with the officers' servants forming the dark fringe of an outer circle. Groundhog was the presiding spirit. By means best known to himself he had become possessed of a jug of Commissary whisky, and was dispensing it to his auditors in guarded drams to highten their appreciation of his wit and humor. He had come across one of the nearly-completed letters which Shorty had thrown aside and failed to find when he burned the rest. Groundhog was now reading this aloud, accompanied by running comments, to the great amusement of his auditors, who felt that, drinking his whisky, and expecting more, they were bound to laugh uproariously at anything he said was funny. "Shorty, that lanky, two-fisted chump of Co. Q, who thinks hisself a bigger man than Gineral Rosecrans," Groundhog explained, "has writ a letter to a gal away off somewhere up North. How in the kingdom he ever come to git acquainted with her or any respectable woman 's more'n I kin tell. But he's got cheek enough for anything. It's sartin, though, that she's never saw him, and don't know nothin' about him, or she'd never let him write to her. Of course, he's as ignorant as a mule. He skeercely got beyant pot-hooks when he wuz tryin' to larn writin', an' he spells like a man with a wooden leg. Look here: "'Mi Dere Frend.' Now, everybody knows that the way to spell dear is d-e-e-r. Then he goes on: "'I taik mi pen in hand to inform u that Ime well, tho I've lost about 15 pounds, and hoap that u air injoyin' the same blessin." "Think o' the vulgarity o' a man writin' to a young lady 'bout his losin' flesh. If a man should write sich a thing to my sister I'd hunt him up and wollop the life outen him. Then he goes on: "'I aint built to spare much meat, and the loss of 15 pounds leaves fallow lots in mi cloze. But it will grow it all back on me agin mitey quick, as soon as we kin hav another protracted meetin' with the Commissary Department.' "Did you ever hear sich vulgarity?" Groundhog groaned. "Now hear him brag and use langwidge unfit for any lady to see: "'We've jest went throo the gosh-almightiest campane that enny army ever done. It wuz rane and mud 48 ours outen the 24, with thunder and litenin' on the side. We got wettern Faro's hosts done chasin' the Jews throo 50 foot of Red See. But we diddent stop for that till we'd hussled old Bragg outen his works, and started him on the keen jump for Chattynoogy, to put the Cumberland Mountings betwixt us and him.'