United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction; War stories
"I told him my story about buying Mexican silver dollars, unt showed him
a lot of the dollars I'd bought.
"'Your story ain't reasonable,' said he. 'You haven't done bizniss
enough to pay you for all the time you've spent around the army. I'll
put you under guard till I can look into your case.'
"He called to the Sergeant of the Guard, unt ordered him to take charge
of me. The Sergeant was that same dirty loafer. Bob Smiles, that I had
the trouble with by Wilson's Creek. He kicked me unt pounded me, unt put
me on my horse, with my hands tied behind me, unt my feet tied under the
horse's belly. I was almost dead by night, when we reached Headquarters.
They gave me something to58 eat, unt I laid down on the floor of the
cabin, wishing I was Pontius Pilate, so that I could crucify every man
in the Southern Confedrisy, especially Bob Smiles. An hour or two later
I heard Bob Smiles swearing again."
The Spy in Custody. 58
"'Make out the names of all the prisoners I have,' he was saying, 'with
where they belong unt the charges against them. I can't. Do they take me
for a counter-jumping clerk? I didn't come into the army to be a white-
faced bookkeeper, I sprained59 my thumb the other day, unt I can't write
even a Httle bit. What am I to do?'
"That was all moonshine about his spraining his thumb. He vas ignorant
as a jackass. If he had 40 thumbs he couldn't write even his own name
so's anybody could read it.
"'I don't believe these's a man in a mile of here that can make out such
a list,' he went on. They're all a set of hominy-eating blockheads.
Perhaps that hook-nosed Jew might. He's the man. I'll make him do it, or
break his swindling head.'
"He come in, kicked me, unt made me get up, unt then took me out unt set
me down at a table, where he had paper, pen unt ink, unt ordered me to
take down the names of the prisoners as he brought them up. He'd look
over my shoulder as I wrote, as if he was reading what I set down, but I
knowed that he couldn't make out a letter. I was tempted to write all
sorts of things about him, but I didn't, for I was in enough trouble
already. When I come to my own name, he said:
"'Make de charge a spy, a thief, unt a Dutch traitor to the Southern
Confedrisy.'
"I just wrote: 'Levi Rosenbaum, Memphis, Tenn. Merchant. No charge.'
"He scowled very wisely at it, unt pretended to read it, unt said:
"'It's lucky for you that you wrote it just as I told you. I'd 'a' broke
every bone in your body if you hadn't.'
"I'd just got done when an officer come down from Headquarters for it.
He looked it over unt said:
"'Who made this out?'
"'Why, I made it out,' said Bob Smiles, bold as brass.
"'But who wrote it?" said de officer.
"'O, I sprained my thumb, so I couldn't write very well, unt I made a
Jew prisoner copy it,' said Bob Smiles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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