He said he was sorry, and I answered that he was not as sorry as I was.

I then "studied on it," as Br'r Rabbit would say, and came back with a request for eleven hundred pounds of beans for the officers' mess.

He said, "Why, Colonel, your officers can't eat eleven hundred pounds of beans," to which I responded, "You don't know what appetites my officers have." He then said he would send the requisition to Washington.

I told him I was quite willing, so long as he gave me the beans.

He was a good fellow, so we finally effected a working compromise--he got the requisition and I got the beans, although he warned me that the price would probably be deducted from my salary.
Under some regulation or other only the regular supply trains were allowed to act, and we were supposed not to have any horses or mules in the regiment itself.