A Number One Minister

A story in a "Letter to the Editor from a Rebel Prisoner"

from Harper's New Monthly Magazine's "Editor's Drawer"

            While we were lying in Mississippi General Price appointed to our regiment, as chaplain, an old Ironside—a man of fine qualities of both head and heart, and who gave promise of securing the affections of the whole command. A few days after, meeting with one of our captains of the same denomination as the chaplain, I asked him how he liked our new preacher.

            “Oh,” said he, “I have known Parson Kathcart for many years; and if it was not for one small fault he has, I would think him a Number One minister.”

            “Well,” I replied, “he is evidently a man of fine sense and good impulses; may I ask what that fault is you allude to?”

            “Don’t understand me as censuring the parson at all: he is a fine preacher and a good man; but what I dislike about him is, that he will swear whenever he gets drunk.”

Smith, Dr. J. F., "Editor's Drawer", Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 28, Issue 164, January 1864, page 282, New York: Harper and Brother's

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