One day Mrs. Hoge, of sanitary fame, and the mother of the colonel of my regiment, came into our camp and after getting all the soldiers of my regiment there not on duty, assembled for an audience, she made a stirring speech. Among other things she said, "Before you left Chicago we ladies presented your regiment with a flag, and your colonel when he received that flag pledged himself that it should ever be defended, and sustained with honor. What has become of that flag? I desire to see how well you have kept that promise." The color sergeant brought it to her. Said she, "There are suspicious looking holes and rents in this flag. How is that?" "That flag," said the color bearer proudly, "has been many times carried in the front when we went across the edge of battle, and those marks were made by bullets and fragments of shell, and madam, two men who carried it before me, fell with it in their hands, and both are dead from the effects of their wounds." "Enough," said the old lady, "You have redeemed your pledge, and I will tell the women of Chicago who presented that flag to you, when I go back, how nobly your pledge has been redeemed." Then she asked some of us who knew the song, to come forward and sing with her "The Star Spangled Banner." I was one who with others thus volunteered, and amid the thunder of artillery firing and the click of minie bullets over our heads we sang that song with Mrs. Hoge, as she held the flag in her arms. One day when we had our men out in the rifle pits at the extreme front we saw a union flag lying in a slight ravine a little ways in front of our rifle pits, which had been abandoned by some regiment in one of the charges, and at the risk of his life one of our boys crawled out and brought in the flag. It proved to be the regimental colors of the 4th Virginia, and when we were relieved from duty we marched up to the colonel's tent of the 4th Virginia and called him out, and I with a few simple, and I thought well chosen remarks restored the lost colors of his regiment to him and wound up by saying, "Take back your flag colonel, and next time when you are in battle hang on to it." He took the flag spitefully from me, turning very red in the face, said nothing about setting up the cigars or drinks and without thanking us even, vanished into the bowels of his tent. We boys were all mad, and if we had known how he was going to act we would have left the flag out there on the battlefield where they had abandoned it. I thought afterwards, that perhaps my presentation speech wasn't just to his taste.