Well every time we wasn’t doing something else they sprung some more of them upseting exercises on us and I called the corporal to one side and says if he would excuse me I would pass up some of them because I didn’t need to exercise on acct. of playing baseball all summer and besides I was tired and he says these exercises was to fix me so I wouldn’t get tired and he made me go through with all of them.  How is that for brains Al and I suppose if a man was up all night watching a corpse or something this bird would make you stay awake all the next day so you wouldn’t get sleepy.

For dinner we had roast chicken and sweet potatoes and cream corn and biscuits and coffee and for supper they was bake beans with tomato sauce and bread and pudding and cake and coffee and the grub is pretty fair only a man can’t enjoy it because you got to eat to fast because if theys anything left on your plate when the rest of them birds gets through you got to fight to keep it from going to the wrong address.  Well Al its pretty near time for the tattoo buggle which means the men has got to shut up and keep quiet so I am going to get ready for bed but I don’t know if I would rather have them keep quiet or not because when they are keeping quiet you don’t know what they are up to and maybe they are snooping a round somewheres waiting for a man to go to sleep so they can cut your throat.  Some of them has been use to doing it all their life Al and they are beggining to miss it.  But I don’t know if I wouldn’t just as leave die that way as from them upseting exercises.

Your pal, jack.

[Illustration]

Camp Grant, Sept. 26.

FRIEND AL: Well Al don’t be surprised if you pick up the paper some A.M. and see where I’m gone and you may think I am just jokeing Al but I am telling you the truth and I am glad Florrie is fixed so she can make a liveing for herself and little Al because I wouldn’t bet a nickle I will be alive by the time this gets to you.

I guess I all ready told you the kind of birds we got in our Co.  Well the worst one in the bunch is a guy named Sebastian and of course he would have to be the one that got the bunk next to mine.  Well Al you remember me writeing to you about the little runt that throwed that guy’s trombone away, well his name is Lahey but we call him Shorty on acct. of him being so short.  Well I hadn’t payed much attention to this here Sebastian because he has always got a grouch and don’t say nothing only to mumble at the officers when they ask him some question but Shorty knows him and last night he told me all about him and he has been pinched 50 times for stabbing people but he has got some pull or something and they can’t never do nothing to him except once he served a turn at Joliet for cutting off a guy’s ears because he wouldn’t get up and give him a seat on a st. car.  He has always got a knife hid on him somewheres and his first name is Nick so they call him Nick the Blade on acct. of always haveing a knife on him.