The war would have lasted a good deal longer had it not been for the daily help of the ever-useful half-canteen.
THE MANY AND QUEER USES TO WHICH IT WAS AT LAST PUT.
[Illustration: THE DIVERSE USES OF THE GOOD OLD CANTEEN 029 ]
WHEN Josiah (called "Si" for short) Klegg, of the 200th Ind., drew his canteen from the Quartermaster at Louisville, he did not have a very high idea of its present or prospective importance. In the 22 hot Summers that he had lived through he had never found himself very far from a well or spring when his thirst cried out to be slacked, and he did not suppose that it was much farther between wells down South.
"I don't see the use of carrying two or three pints o' water along all day right past springs and over cricks," he remarked to his chum, as the two were examining the queer, cloth-covered cans.
"We've got to take 'em, any way," answered his chum, resignedly, "It's regulations."
On his entry into service a boy accepted everything without question when assured that it was "regulations." He would have charged bayonets on a buzz-saw if authoritatively informed that it was required by the mysterious "regulations."
The long march the 200th Ind. made after Bragg over the dusty turnpikes the first week in October, 1862, taught Si the value of a canteen. After that it was rarely allowed to get empty.
"What are these grooves along each side for?" he asked, pointing out the little hollows which give the "prod" lightness and strength.
"Why," answered the Orderly, who, having been in the three-months' service, assumed to know more about war than the Duke of Wellington, "the intention of those is to make a wound the lips of which will close up when the bayonet is pulled out, so that the man'll be certain to die."
Naturally so diabolical an intention sent cold shivers down Si's back.
The night before Si left for "the front" he had taken his musket and couterments home to show them to his mother and sisters--and the other fellow's sister, whose picture and lock of hair he had safely stowed away. They looked upon the bayonet with a dreadful awe. Tears came into Maria's eyes as she thought of Si roaming about through the South like a bandit plunging that cruel steel into people's bowels.