This night I succeeded in getting a "bang up" supper--a cooked meal--at a reb farm-house. It consisted of pork-steak, potatoes, and hot coffee with bread and butter. It was a great treat. I had now been without a square meal for nearly ten days. The old gentleman, a small farmer, talked freely about the war, not concealing his rebel sympathies. He extolled Stonewall Jackson and his men, who, he said, had passed through there only a day ahead of us. He firmly believed we would be whipped. He evidently had an eye for the "main chance," for he was quite willing to cook for us at twenty-five cents a meal, as long as he had stuff to cook and his good wife had strength to do the work. She seemed to be a nice old lady, and, hungry as I was, I felt almost unwilling to eat her supper, she looked so tired. I told her it was too bad. She smiled and said she was tired, but she couldn't bear to turn away these hungry boys. She said she had a son in the rebel army, and she knew we must be hungry and wet, for it was still raining hard. The officers at this time experienced difficulty in getting food to eat. The men were supplied with rations and forced to carry them, but rations were not issued to officers--though they might purchase of the commissary such as the men had, when there was a supply. The latter were supposed to provide their own mess, for which purpose their mess-kits were transported in a wagon supplied to each regiment. The field and staff usually made one mess, and the line or company officers another. Sometimes the latter messed with their own men, carrying their rations along on the march the same as the men. This was discouraged by the government, but it proved the only way to be sure of food when needed, and was later on generally adopted. We had plenty of food with our mess-kit and cook, but on the march, and especially in the presence of the enemy, our wagons could never get within reach of us. Indeed, when we bivouacked, they were generally from eight to ten miles away. The result was we often went hungry, unless we were able to pick up a meal at a farm-house--which seldom occurred, for the reason that most of these farmers were rebel sympathizers and would not feed us "Yanks," or they would be either sold out, or stolen out, of food. The tale generally told was, "You 'uns has stolen all we 'uns had." This accounts for the entry in my diary that the next morning I marched without breakfast, but got a good bath in the Monocacy--near which we encamped--in place of it. I got a "hardtack" and bit of raw pork about 10 A.M.