Si Klegg, Complete, Books 1-6
fellow-man.     

       Si Klegg's company was on picket one day, while Gen. Buell was trying to make up his mind what to do with Bragg. Rations had been a little short for a week or so. In fact, they had been scarcely sufficient to meet the demands of Si's appetite, and his haversack had nothing in it to speak of. Strict orders against foraging had been, issued. It was the day of       "guarding rebel onion patches." Si couldn't quite get it straight in his head why the General should be so mighty particular about a few pigs and chickens and sweet potatoes, for he was really getting hungry, and when a       man is in this condition he is not in a fit mood to grapple with fine-spun theories of governmental policy.     

       So when a fat pig came wabbling and grunting toward his post, it was to Si like a vision of manna to the children of Israel in the wilderness. A wild, uncontrollable desire to taste a fresh spare-rib took possession of him. Naturally, his first idea was to send a bullet through the animal, but on second thought he saw that wouldn't do at all. It would "give him away" at once, and, besides, he had found that a single shot on the picket-line would keep Buell's entire army in line-of-battle for a whole day.     

       Si wrote to his mother that his bright new bayonet was stained with Southern blood, and the old lady shuddered at the awful thought. "But,"       added Si, "it was only a pig, and not a man, that I killed!"     

       "I'm so glad!" she exclaimed.     

  

       By the time Si had been in the service a year there was less zeal in the enforcement of orders of this kind, and Si had become a very skillful and successful forager. He had still been unable to reach with his bayonet the body of a single one of his misguided fellow citizens, but he had stabbed a great many pigs and sheep. In fact, Si found his bayonet a most useful auxiliary in his predatory operations. He could not well have gotten along without it.     

       Uncle Sam generally furnished Si with plenty of coffee—roasted and unground—but did not supply him with a coffee mill. Si thought at first that the Government had forgotten something. He saw that several of the old veterans of '61 had coffee mills, but he found on inquiry that they had been obtained by 
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