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| The camp-fire after the Jonah appears. |
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tent for this purpose he was sure to stumble over the end of one or both of the rails, when the downfall of the coffeepots and the quenching of the fire followed as a matter of course.
At just this point in his career it would be to the credit of his associates to drop the curtain on the picture; but the sequel must be told.
The average soldier was not an especially devout man, and while in times of imminent danger he had serious thoughts, yet at other times his many trials, his privations, and the rigors of a necessary discipline
all conduced to make him a highly explosive creature on demand.
Moreover, coffee and sugar were staple articles with the soldier, and the least waste of them was not to be tolerated under ordinary circumstances; but to have a whole line of coffee-pots with their precious contents upset by the Jonah of the tent in his recklessness was the last ounce of pressure removed from the safety valve of his tent-mates' wrath; and such a discharge of hard names and oaths, “long, loud, and deep,” as many of these sufferers would deliver themselves of, if it could have been utilized against the enemy, might have demolished a regiment.
And the others who did not give vent to their passions by blows
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