'Who in thunderation are you ?' sez he.
'You're Bill Brayton, of Tennessee, fightin' in the rebel army, when you ought to know better,' says I.'Now, who in thunderation am I ?' 'Sufferin' Moses!' says he, 'that voice grows more like his every time he speaks.

It can't be that empty-headed galoot, Dan Whitley, who never knew nothin' 'bout the rights an' wrongs of the war, an' had to go off with the Yanks!' "'It's him an' nobody else,' says I, as I rose right up an' stood there on the bank, 'an' mighty glad am I to see you Bill, an' to know that your fool head ain't knocked off by a cannon ball.' He shorely jumped up an' down with pleasure an' he called back: 'The good Lord certainly watches over them that ain't got any sense.

Dan, you flat-headed, hump-backed, round-shouldered, thin-chested, knock-kneed, club-footed son of a gun, I was never so glad to see anybody before in my life.' "His eyes were shinin' with delight an' I know mine was, too.

Reunions of old friends who for all each know have been dead a year or two, clean blowed to pieces by shells, or shot through by a hundred rifle bullets are powerful affectin'.

He come down to the edge of the river an' he shot questions across to me, an' I shot questions at him, an' I felt as if a brother had riz from the dead.