It was good, I tell you. The eggs were a little over half done.
I soon demolished both, and it was only an appetizer. I invested a
couple of dollars more, and thought that maybe I could make out till
supper time. As I turned around, a smiling, one-legged man asked me if I
wouldn't like to have a drink. Now, if there was anything that I wanted
at that time, it was a drink.
"How do you sell it?" says I.
"A dollar a drink," said he.
"Pour me out a drink."
It was a tin cap-box. I thought that I knew the old fellow, and he kept
looking at me as if he knew me. Finally, he said to me:
"It seems that I ought to know you."
I told him that I reckon he did, as I had been there.
"Ain't your name Sam?" said he.
"That is what my mother called me."
Well, after shaking hands, it suddenly flashed upon me who the old
fellow was. I knew him well. He told me that he belonged to Captain
Ed. O'Neil's company, Second Tennessee Regiment, General William
B. Bate's corps, and that his leg had been shot off at the first battle
of Manassas, and at that time he was selling cheap whisky and tobacco for
a living at Montgomery, Alabama. I tossed off a cap-box full and paid
him a dollar. It staggered me, and I said:
"That is raw whisky.
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