“I saw an old man go riding by,”

and the baritones, flinging themselves around with the looseness of Christy’s Minstrels, in a “break down,” would reply: 

          “Don’t tell me!  Don’t tell me!”

Then the tenors would resume: 

          “Says I, Ole man, your horse’ll die.”

Then the baritones, with an air of exaggerated interest;

          “A-ha-a-a, Billy Patterson!”

Tenors: 

          “For.  It he dies, I’ll tan his skin;
          An’ if he lives I’ll ride him agin,”

All-together, with a furious “break down” at the close: 

          “Then I’ll lay five dollars down,
          And count them one by one;
          Then I’ll lay five dollars down,
          If anybody will show me the man
          That struck Billy Patterson.”

And so on.  It used to upset my gravity entirely to see a crowd of grave and dignified Captains, Majors and Colonels going through this nonsensical drollery with all the abandon of professional burnt-cork artists.

As we were nearing the entrance to Chesapeake Bay we passed a great monitor, who was exercising her crew at the guns.  She fired directly across our course, the huge four hundred pound balls shipping along the water, about a mile ahead of us, as we boys used to make the flat stones skip in the play of “Ducks and Drakes.”  One or two of the shots came so. close that I feared she might be mistaking us for a Rebel ship intent on some raid up the Bay, and I looked up anxiously to see that the flag should float out so conspicuously that she could not help seeing it.

The next day our vessel ran alongside of the dock at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, that institution now being used as a hospital for paroled prisoners.  The musicians of the Post band came down with stretchers to carry the sick to the Hospital, while those of us who were able to walk were ordered to fall in and march up.  The distance was but a few hundred yards.  On reaching the building we marched up on a little balcony, and as we did so each one of us was seized by a hospital attendant, who, with the quick dexterity attained by long practice, snatched every one of our filthy, lousy rags off in the twinkling of an eye, and flung them over the railing to the ground, where a man loaded them into a wagon with a pitchfork.

With them went our faithful little black can, our hoop-iron spoon, and our chessboard and men.

Thus entirely denuded, each boy was given a shove which sent him into a little room, where a barber pressed him down upon a stool, and almost before he understood what was being done, had his hair and beard cut off as close as shears would do it.  Another tap on the back sent the shorn lamb into a room furnished with great tubs of water and with about six inches of soap suds on the zinc-covered floor.