CAMP REMINISCENCES PERHAPS you will not object to a few short military yarns which I have hastily twined for your edification. And if the interesting, fair-haired, blue-eyed (or otherwise) son of the reader, now sitting on his knee, on hearing them, should look confidingly into his parent's face, and inquire "Is that true, Papa?" reply, oh reader, unhesitatingly—“ My son, it is." Many years since, during the height of the Florida war, a company of the Second Infantry made their camp for the night, after a rainy day's march, by the bank of a muddy stream that sluggishly meandered through a dense and unwholesome everglade. Dennis Mulligan, the red-haired Irish servant of the commanding officer, having seen his master's tent comfortably pitched, lit a small fire beneath a huge palmetto, and having cut several slices of fat pork from the daily ration, proceeded to fry that edible for the nightly repast. In the deep gloom of the evening, silence reigned unbroken but by the crackling of Dennis's small fire and the frizzling of the pork as it crisped and curled in the mighty mess-pan, when suddenly, with a tremendous "whoosh," the leaves of the palmetto were disturbed and a great barred owl, five feet from tip to tip, settled in the foliage. Dennis was superstitious (most Irishmen are), and, startled by the disturbance, he suspended for an instant his culinary operations, and, frying-pan in hand, gazed slowly and fearfully about him. Persuading himself that the noise was but the effect of imagination, he again addressed himself to his task, when the owl set up his fearful hoot, which sounded to the horrified ears of Dennis like, "Who cooks for you all?" Again he suspended operations, again gazed fearfully forth into the night, again persuaded himself that his imagination was at fault, and was about to return to his task, when accidentally glancing upward he beheld the awful countenance and glaring eyes of the owl turned downward upon him, and from that cavernous throat, in hollow tones, again issued the question, "Who who cooks for you -- all?" "God bless your honor," said poor Dennis, while the mess-pan shook in his quivering grasp, and the unheeded pork poured forth a molten stream, which, falling upon the flames, caused a burst of illumination that added to the terrors of the scene, "God bless your honor, I cooks for Captain Eaton, but I don't know, sir, who cooks for the rest of the gintle |