Ladies' Curiosity Gratified

This entry comes from the Memphis Daily Appeal, November 14, 1861.

Ladies Curiosity Gratified.

            The war correspondent of the Charleston Courier tells the following good one:
            Frequently the ladies are in the habit of visiting the prisoners, but oftener from curiosity than sympathy.  Another incident is told of an encounter between several of them and an Irishman:

            It had become a matter of habit with the fair ones to open conversation with the very natural inquiry, "Where are you wounded?" and accordingly when a party of three or four the other day approached our cell, they launched out in the usual way.  Paddy made believe that he didn't hear distinctly and replied, "Pretty well, I thank yez."  "Where were you wounded?" again fired away one of the ladies.  "Faith, I'm not badly hurt at all.  I'll be thravelling to Richmond in a wake," replied Pat, with a peculiarly distressing look, as if he was in a tight place.  Thinking that he was deaf, one of the old ladies in the background put her mouth down to his ear and shouted again, "We want to know where you are hurt."
 

            Pat evidently finding that if the bombardment continued much longer he would have to strike his flag anyhow, concluded to do so at once, and accordingly, with a face as rosy as a boiled lobster, and with an angry kind of energy, he replied:  "Sure, leddies, it's not deaf that I am, but since ye are determined to know where I've been wounded, its in my sate.  The bullet entered behind of my breeches.  Please to excuse my feelings and ax me no more questions."

          I leave it to you to imagine the blushing consternation of the inquisitors and sudden locomotion of the crinoline out of the front door.

Seated soldier wearing four button sack with kepi, patriotic matte, from Library of Congress Collection