[446] duly sworn and commissioned as chief cook in Company K, of the First Iowa Cavalry.
One of the Anderson Zouaves relates the following incident as having come under his observation: We were scouting one day in Alabama, when in a remote field we found a negro man and woman ploughing with a good horse. We paused, and the ploughers gazed at us with the greatest curiosity. I never saw a more thoroughly astonished individual. It was evidently his first sight at Yankee soldiers. “Well, boy, wont you come along with us?” I said. “De Lawd bless's-mars's, is you really De Fed'rals?” “That's it, old fellow.” “De rale Linkum sojers?” “Exactly.” “De kind as wants counterbans?” “Identically.” Here he proceeded with great deliberation to unhitch his horse from the plough. Gathering up divers small objects, that nothing might be lost, he slung himself on his steed, and cried, over his shoulder, to his amazed work-fellow:
Good-by, M'ria. I'se off!And off he rode, stared at by “M'Ria,” whose eyes gazed after him in utter and complete bewilderment-“like the grandmother of all the owls when she first baw sunshine.”
