("Great Jehosephat, what work writing to a young lady is. I'd much ruther build breastworks or make roads. Now, if it was some ordinary woman, I wouldn't have to be careful about my spelin' and gramer, but with sich a lady as Maria Klegg--great Cesar's ghost! a man must do the very best that's in him, and then that ain't half enough. But I must hurry and finish this letter this afternoon. I can't git another day off to work at it.") "Respected Miss Maria, what a fine writer you are. Yore handwritin' is the most beautiful I ever seen. Jeb Smith, our company clerk, thinks that he can slink ink to beat old Spencerian System hisself, but he ain't once with you. Ide ruther see one line ov your beautiful ritin' than all that he ever writ." ("That's so," said Shorty, after judicially scanning the sentence. "Jeb kin do some awful fancy kurlys, and draw a bird without takin' his pen from the paper, but he never writ my name a thousandth part as purty as Maria kin.") "And how purty you spel. Ime something ov a speler myself, and can nock out most ov the boys in the company on Webster's Primary, but I aint to be menshuned in the saim day with you. "With best respecks to your family, and hoapin soon to here from you, I am very respeckfully, your friend, W. L. Elliot. Corpril, Company Q, 2 Hundsrdth Injiamiy Volintear Infantry." By the time he had his letter finished, and was wiping the sweat of intense labor from his brow, he heard the bugle sounding the first call for dress parade. "I must go and begin my fatherly dooties to little Pete Skidmore," he said, carefully sealing his letter and sticking a stamp on it, to mail at the Chaplain's tent as he went by. "It's goin' to be extry fatigue to be daddy to a little cuss as lively as a schoolhouse flea, and Corpril of Co. Q, at the same time, but I'm going to do it, if it breaks a leg." He was passing a clump of barberry bushes when he overheard Pete Skidmore's voice inside: "I'll bet $10 I kin pick it out every time. I'll bet $25 I kin pick it out this time. Don't tech the cards." "I don't want to lose no more money on baby bets," replied a tantalizing voice. "I'll make it $40 or nothin'. Now, youngster, if y're a man--" Shorty softly parted the bushes and looked in. Two of the well-known sharpers who hung around the camps had enticed little Pete in there, and to a game of three-card monte. They had inflamed his boyish conceit by allowing him to pick out two cards in succession, and with small bets. "I hain't got but $40 left o' my bounty and first month's pay," said little Pete irresolutely, "and I wanted to send $35 of it home to mother, but I'll--" "You'll do nothin' o' the kind," shouted Shorty, bursting through the bushes. "You measly whelps, hain't you a grain o' manhood left? Ain't you ashamed to swindle a green little kid out o' the money that he wants to send to his widowed mother?"