Some days we fared well; on other days there would be no dinner, but a detestable bacon soup, hardly fit for hogs.

Sunday, October 6. —Camp at Darnestown. The battery received three new guns in the afternoon. Lieut. J. G. Hassard, having joined our battery, at Darnestown, commanded the right section as First Lieutenant. Company cooking was introduced by him. Before that, every detachment done its own cooking. The enterprise itself, of cooking for the whole company, and the selling of a part of the rations, for raising a company fund would have been well enough, but the management was extremely poor. Some days we fared well; on other days there would be no dinner, but a detestable bacon soup, hardly fit for hogs. We were told that the government rations would not admit of a dinner every day. But what good did it do then to sell rations, under the pretext of raising a company fund? This is a question which never could nor never will be satisfactorily explained by those who started it.