Drum Taps in Dixie: Memories of a Drummer Boy, 1861-1865 — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Drum Taps in Dixie: Memories of a Drummer Boy, 1861-1865
John Stuart Mill · en
Two boys when coming home from the war were talking over what they were
going to do. One whom we will call Joe said he was going to have all of
the strawberry shortcake he wanted, and then he was going to have mother
make some of the good old-fashioned flap-jacks that he liked so well. “I
am going to have her make them the full size of the round griddle, and as
she bakes them I’m going to spread them with butter and shaved up maple
sugar until the pile is a foot high and then I’ll sit down and have all
the pancakes I want for once. What are you going to do, Bill?”
“Me? I’m going to go to every dance, minstrel show, singing school and
revival meeting I can hear of in forty miles, and I’m going home with
every pretty girl I get a chance to. And another thing I’m going to do,
I’ll sit up nights and burn a light until I get an all fired good ready to
go to bed. And I’m goin’ to hire a fifer and drummer to come and play in
front of our house every mornin’.”
[Illustration: DRUM CORPS OF THE 2ND NEW YORK HEAVY ARTILLERY.]
“Why, Bill, what in thunder you goin’ to do that for? I should think that
you’d had enough of fifin’ and drummin’ for awhile.”
“Well,” says Bill, “I’m goin’ to do it, and I’m goin’ to have them play
the reveille good and strong for fifteen minutes, and then I’m goin’ to
shove up the chamber window and throw my bootjack at ’em, and yell: ‘To
h--l with your reveille.’”
RIVAL DRUM CORPS.
The first two years of the war we were brigaded with a certain
Massachusetts regiment that was about as fine a body of men as I ever saw
together. In fact they looked like a picked lot of soldiers so near of a
height were they all.