"Hard-tack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ambulance; but, as the day wore on, the intervals of rest grew longer and more frequent. We had but one opportunity to water the sweating horses of the artillery, and then it was a painful matter of buckets. We munched hard-tack for our noonday meal, and made merry over it, talking of the day when we should go home and feast on beans and beefsteak and countless other things of which the heathen wot not. We were intensely voluble or silent by turns, and invented new nicknames for each other, which ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... traveling only by night, he had traversed one hundred miles with a rope round his neck, and without the prospect of special reward. For he was but a private, and received but a private's pay—thirteen dollars a month, a shoddy uniform, and hard-tack, when he could ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Chickamauga, in a way that made Longstreet wish he'd staid on the Rappahannock, and never tried to get up any little sociable with the Westerners. If I do say it myself, I believe we've got as good a crowd of square, stand-up, trust 'em-every-minute-in-your-life boys, as ever thawed hard-tack and sowbelly. We got all the grunters and weak sisters fanned out the first year, and since then we've been on a business basis, all the time. We're in a mighty good brigade, too. Most of the regiments have been with us since we formed the first brigade Pap Thomas ever ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... out of grub. Got nothin' but jerked beef an' hard-tack. How are things a-stackin', Joe?" asked a heavy-set, bow-legged man with a cold, ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... there was hard riding ahead of them. Some ran to the supply house for extra cartridges, and these were hurriedly thrust into belts or pockets. Coats and hats that had been discarded were donned, and several men began packing up some bacon and hardtack, while others strapped simple camp outfits back of their saddles, for there was no telling how long they would be obliged to ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... Manila opened fire at the same time. Every man on the ship was now wide awake and at his post. I knew that it would not be long before there would be some hot work, and I served my men with a cup of coffee and a piece of hardtack, and a little later gave them each a ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... understood what I said to her through the speaking-trumpet. A grim humor of despair suggested that at that distance, and in that blustering wind, the faithful maid-servant might have thought that instead of shouting that I loved my Bertha, I was asking her if they had plenty of salt pork and hardtack. It was indeed ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... perhaps cold and wet, the smoke everywhere, the coffee pot melted down, the can of soup upset in the fire, the fiendish conduct of frying pan and kettle, the final surrender of the exhausted victim, sliding off to sleep with a piece of hardtack in one hand and a slice of canned beef in the other, only to dream of mother's hot biscuits, juicy steaks, etc., etc." It is very well put, and so true to the life. And again: "Frying, baking, making coffee, ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... remain till night, for I considered it a very dangerous undertaking to cross the wide prairies in broad daylight, especially as my horse was a poor one. I accordingly unsaddled my animal, and ate a hearty breakfast of bacon and hardtack which I had stored in the saddle-pockets; then, after taking a smoke, I lay down to sleep, with my saddle for a pillow. In a few minutes I was in the land ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the prisoners in the Basilius monastery into which soldiers of all nationalities had been driven, during 13 days received only a little hardtack, but neither wood nor a drop of water; they had to quench their thirst with the snow which covered the ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... We've got to take at least four of them; load them up with barley, bacon, hardtack, ammunition. Kick off everything else. We'll feed and water here before starting, then we've got to ride like the devil. Send Trooper Bland here as soon as he has unsaddled. I want him to ride with me. He knows all the roads to ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... some of the Filipinos were obliged to camp in the public square overnight, while the wounded and ill were given beds in the various houses of the town. The inhabitants were required to furnish food, too, for the Americans were entirely out of almost everything. They still had some hardtack, but of meat and coffee there was none. The people of the town pretended to be very glad to serve their "masters," but every one knew that the natives would be only too glad of a chance to cut the throat of ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... yew lose no sleep ter-night," she admonished, "a-worryin' erbout the change in yer vittles. I told Cap'n Sam'l that hardtack an' sech like wouldn't never do fer yer weak stummick, an' he promised me faithful he'd send somebody tew the ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... the Insurgent trenches, not all of our own killed and wounded had been removed, yet every wounded Insurgent whom we found had a United States army canteen of water at his side, obviously left by some kindly American soldier. Not a few of the injured had been furnished hardtack as well. All were ultimately taken to Manila and there given the best ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... party that brought good cheer. Each tarried, for a brief time, to attend to the live stock under his immediate care, and some even to snatch a morsel of food, but mostly they were off and away again, a flask of water and a bit of hardtack in pocket, oftener than not ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... "It wasn't any of his business to buy the grub,—the commissary department had to supply it free,—but he knew we might starve while the department was getting itself straightened out and ready to do the right thing. Before he went on a hunt for food, all we had was salt pork, hardtack, and coffee, and some of the stuff wasn't fit to put in your mouth." And this testimony was the testimony of scores ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... been issued by the French authorities concerning the party of prisoners among whom was Pierre. On the twenty-second of October that party was no longer with the same troops and baggage trains with which it had left Moscow. Half the wagons laden with hardtack that had traveled the first stages with them had been captured by Cossacks, the other half had gone on ahead. Not one of those dismounted cavalrymen who had marched in front of the prisoners was left; ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... different classes made on alternate summers, when the "young gentlemen" were trained to do all the work of seamen, both alow and aloft, and lived on the old navy ration of salt junk, pork and beans, and hardtack, with no extras, were anything but a joke. The Academy, too, was in a transition state from the system in vogue, up to 1850 inclusive, prior to which period the midshipmen went to sea immediately after appointment, pretty much after ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... occurred at our nooning hour, amidst the dust and the heat, while the animals drooped and dozed and panted and in the scant shade of the hooded wagons we drank our coffee and crunched our hardtack. Throughout the morning My Lady had ridden upon the seat of Daniel's wagon, with him sometimes trudging beside, in pride of new ownership, cracking his whip, and again planted sidewise upon one of the wheel animals, facing backward to ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... gradually failing stream had trickled itself into nothingness. One essential, one comfort then had not been denied the beleaguered few, but it was about the only one. Water for drink, for fevered wounds and burning throats, they had in abundance; but the last "hardtack" had been shared, the last scrap of bacon long since devoured. Of the once-abundant rations only coffee grains were left. Of the cartridge-crammed "thimble belts," with which they had entered the canon and the Apache trap, only three contained so much as a single copper cylinder, stopped by its ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... permit baking. It is a cracker prepared of plain flour and water, not even salted, and kiln-dried to a chip, so as to keep indefinitely, its only enemies being weevils. Get the coarsest grade. To make hardtack palatable toast it until crisp, or soak in hot coffee and butter it, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts |
