Peck's Fun; Being Extracts from the La Crosse Sun and Peck's Sun, Milwaukee, Carefully Selected with the Object of Affording the Public in One Volume, ... of Mr. Peck's Writings of the Past Ten Years
George Wilbur Peck
Paperback
(RareBooksClub.com, Sept. 13, 2013)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 edition. Excerpt: ...I need have no fear of rebel bullets, all he required in an orderly was cheek. In that position I seemed to lose all fear of death. Always in the advance, while on the march, with the Sutler's wagon and the ambulance, I took my life in my hand, but seemed to possess a charmed one. I shall never regret the day when I made the acquaintence of the chaplain, and established such amicable relations with him. The last I heard of him he was a bright and shining ornament on the marble top of the freedmen's bureau, and I have never wondered at the bursting ot the Freedman's Savings Bank, since I knew he was one of the officers. But all chaplains were notlike the one I have mentioned. Some of them were brave, and noble men, who entered the service for the good they might do, never thinking of the salary. As a general thing, however, a chaplain was about as useless a piece of furniture to a regiment as a seven octave sewing machine would be to the naked native of the Fejee Islands. At the bedside of a dying soldier they were sometimes handy, but it was always our luck, when a soldier was about to pass beyond the river, to have the chaplain away attending a nigger ' prayer meeting, or away looking after the spiritual welfare of some planter's chickens, and some rough soldier had to stand by and tell the poor dying boy of the beautiful world beyond where the troops would all be mustered out, and there never would be war any more. There was one thing, however, noticeable in our regiment, and that was that when a soldier died, in the absence of the chaplain, the soldier's friends always succeeded in getting the soldier's watch and money. It may have happened so, but it was noticeable. In time I found that the position...