In the afternoon of the third day after the capture, we came up to where a party of rustic belles were collected at “quilting.”  The “Yankees” were instantly objects of greater interest than the parade of a menagerie would have been.  The Sergeant told the girls we were going to camp for the night a mile or so ahead, and if they would be at a certain house, he would have a Yankee for them for close inspection.  After halting, the Sergeant obtained leave to take me out with a guard, and I was presently ushered into a room in which the damsels were massed in force, —­a carnation-checked, staring, open-mouthed, linsey-clad crowd, as ignorant of corsets and gloves as of Hebrew, and with a propensity to giggle that was chronic and irrepressible.  When we entered the room there was a general giggle, and then a shower of comments upon my appearance,—­each sentence punctuated with the chorus of feminine cachination.  A remark was made about my hair and eyes, and their risibles gave way; judgment was passed on my nose, and then came a ripple of laughter.  I got very red in the face, and uncomfortable generally.  Attention was called to the size of my feet and hands, and the usual chorus followed.  Those useful members of my body seemed to swell up as they do to a young man at his first party.

Then I saw that in the minds of these bucolic maidens I was scarcely, if at all, human; they did not understand that I belonged to the race; I was a “Yankee”—­a something of the non-human class, as the gorilla or the chimpanzee.  They felt as free to discuss my points before my face as they would to talk of a horse or a wild animal in a show.  My equanimity was partially restored by this reflection, but I was still too young to escape embarrassment and irritation at being thus dissected and giggled at by a party of girls, even if they were ignorant Virginia mountaineers.

I turned around to speak to the Sergeant, and in so doing showed my back to the ladies.  The hum of comment deepened into surprise, that half stopped and then intensified the giggle.

I was puzzled for a minute, and then the direction of their glances, and their remarks explained it all.  At the rear of the lower part of the cavalry jacket, about where the upper ornamental buttons are on the tail of a frock coat, are two funny tabs, about the size of small pin-cushions.  They are fastened by the edge, and stick out straight behind.  Their use is to support the heavy belt in the rear, as the buttons do in front.  When the belt is off it would puzzle the Seven Wise Men to guess what they are for.  The unsophisticated young ladies, with that swift intuition which is one of lovely woman’s salient mental traits, immediately jumped at the conclusion that the projections covered some peculiar conformation of the Yankee anatomy—­some incipient, dromedary-like humps, or perchance the horns of which they had heard so much.

This anatomical phenomena was discussed intently for a few minutes, during which I heard one of the girls inquire whether “it would hurt him to cut ’em off?” and another hazarded the opinion that “it would probably bleed him to death.”