But to recur to the hoe cake, from which I have so widely and unwarrantedly digressed. As I have said, dimensions are relative. To me, at that time, it appeared larger than the rising moon, distorted and enlarged by the evening mists, or, not to seem too poetic, as large as the fifth wheel of a battery as it appears stuck on behind. I do not wish to exaggerate, but only to express adequately the importance of the ancient corn product on this occasion, and as it looms up in my memory. To any inquiring mind still unsatisfied it may be said that subsequent observations, made under circumstances more favorable to accurate measurement, lead me to believe that the cake aforesaid was about eight inches in diameter, and an inch and a half thick. Still I do not hold to these subsequent observations and reflections. That hoe cake remains, in the memory of my early life, as the rising moon in the east, while I now, alas! am tending low down in the west. But there is another and to me still more important circumstance connected with this affair, affecting my subsequent history and moral character, and only as a most confidential communication to my companions of the war do I write it down as a turning point in my history. I was never before under such moral strain or under anything approximating such strain, except once, somewhere about the region of Spottsylvania, C. H., when, after a prolonged diet of dirt, salt pork, fried or raw, and hardtack, a brother officer lent me his canteen just brought up from the rear filled with a rich soup. I did not drink (as I afterwards feared) all I properly might; but then he stood before me with a watchful eye. Here I was in full control of the situation. I am proud to say that even at that late stage in the war I had such moral sense remaining as to property and particularly as to hospitality, and I shared with the orderly, probably as hungry as I. But how did I divide? Equally, notwithstanding the disparity of rank and the fact of possession. My good angel must have been with me. Spite of the clamors of a beastly appetite, and although the cake was round, I broke it on the square. Success in that severe trial has rendered it easier, in all these subsequent years, to divide fairly with my fellow man. Perhaps I have not always done it, but when it has fallen to my lot to cut a pie I have remembered that hoe cake.