Wherever these holes were the sun had burned my back, breast and shoulders deeply black.

The parts covered by the threads and fragments forming the boundaries of the holes, were still white.

When I pulled my alleged shirt off, to wash or to free it from some of its teeming population, my skin showed a fine lace pattern in black and white, that was very interesting to my comrades, and the subject of countless jokes by them.
They used to descant loudly on the chaste elegance of the design, the richness of the tracing, etc., and beg me to furnish them with a copy of it when I got home, for their sisters to work window curtains or tidies by.

They were sure that so striking a novelty in patterns would be very acceptable.

I would reply to their witticisms in the language of Portia's Prince of Morocco: Mislike me not for my complexion-- The shadowed livery of the burning sun.
One of the stories told me in my childhood by an old negro nurse, was of a poverty stricken little girl "who slept on the floor and was covered with the door," and she once asked-- "Mamma how do poor folks get along who haven't any door ?" In the same spirit I used to wonder how poor fellows got along who hadn't any shirt.
One common way of keeping up one's clothing was by stealing mealsacks.
The meal furnished as rations was brought in in white cotton sacks.
Sergeants of detachments were required to return these when the rations were issued the next day.