The colonels might every now and then have understood a word, and maybe a few of the captains and lieutenants, because Lieutenant Lansdown told me he understood every word the preacher said, and further informed me that it was none of your one-horse, old-fashioned country prayers that privates knew anything about, but was bang-up, first-rate, orthodox.
Well, after singing and praying, he took his text.

I quote entirely from memory.

"Blessed be the Lord God, who teaches my hands to war and my fingers to fight." Now, reader, that was the very subject we boys did not want to hear preached on--on that occasion at least.

We felt like some other subject would have suited us better.

I forget how he commenced his sermon, but I remember that after he got warmed up a little, he began to pitch in on the Yankee nation, and gave them particular fits as to their geneology.