Und kiss Katrina in der mout'?
Der drummer.

Who, ven he gomes again dis vay,
Vill hear vot Pfeiffer has to say,

Und mit a plack eye goes avay?

Der drummer.

MARK TWAIN'S WAR EXPERIENCES.

Mr. Samuel L. Clemens was a guest at the dinner given the Boston Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in Hartford by the Putnam Phalanx of that city, and in responding to a toast said:

"I wouldn't have missed being here for a good deal. The last time I had the privilege of breaking bread with soldiers was some years ago with the oldest military organization in England, the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of London, somewhere about its six hundredth anniversary; and now I have enjoyed this privilege with its eldest child, the oldest military organization in America, the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, on this their two hundred and fortieth anniversary. Fine old stock, both of you; and if you fight as well as you feed, God protect the enemy. I did not assemble at the hotel parlors to-day to be received by a committee as a mere civilian guest. No, I assembled at the head-quarters of the Putnam Phalanx, and insisted upon my right to be escorted to this place as one of the military guests. For I, too, am a soldier. I am inured to

war. I have a military history. I have been through a stirring campaign, and there is not even a mention of it in any history of the United States or of the Southern Confederacy. To such lengths can the envy and malignity of the historian go. I will unbosom myself here, where I cannot but find sympathy. I will tell you about it and appeal through you to justice. In the earliest summer days of the war, I slipped out of Hannibal, Mo., by night, with a friend,

and joined a detachment of the rebel Gen. Tom Harris' (I find myself in a great minority here) Army, up a gorge behind an old barn in Ralls County. Col. Ralls, of Mexican war celebrity, swore us in. He made us swear to uphold the flag and Constitution of the United States, and to destroy every other military organization that we caught doing the same thing, which, being interpreted, means that we were to repel invasion. Well, you see this mixed us. We couldn't really tell which side we were on. But we went into camp and left it to the God of battles. For that was the term then. I was made Second Lieutenant and Chief Mogul of a company of eleven men who knew nothing about war-nor anything, for we had no Captain. My friend, who was nineteen years old, six feet high, three feet wide, and some distance through, and just out of the infant school, was made Orderly Sergeant. His name was Ben Tupper. He had a hard time. When he was mounted and on the march he used to go to sleep, and his horse would reach around and bite him on the leg, and then he would wake up and cry and curse and want to go home. The other men pestered him a good deal, too. When they were dismounted they said they couldn't march in double file with him because his feet took up so much room. One night, when we were round the camp-fire, some fellow on the outside in the cold said: 'Ben Tupper, put down that newspaper; it throws the whole place into twilight, and casts a shadow like a blank.' Ben said: 'I ain't got any newspaper.' Then the other fellow said, 'Oh, I see; 'twas your ear.' We all slept in a corn-crib on the corn, and the rats were very thick. Ben Tupper had been carefully and rightly reared, and when he was ready for bed he would start to pray and a rat would bite him in the heel. And then he would sit up and swear all night and keep everybody awake. He was town-bred, and did not seem to have any correct idea of military discipline. If I commanded him to shut up, he would say, 'Who was your

nigger last year? One evening I ordered him to ride out about three miles on picket duty, to the beginning of a prairie. Said he, 'What, in the night, and them blamed Union soldiers likely to be prowling around there any time? So he wouldn't go, and the next morning I ordered him again. Said he: 'In the rain? I think I see myself!' He didn't go. Next day I ordered him on picket duty once more. This time he looked hurt. Said he: 'What, on Sunday! you must be a fool.' Well, picketing might have been a very good thing, but I saw it was impracticable, so I dropped it from my military system. We had a good enough time there at that barn, barring the rats and the mosquitoes and the rain. We levied on both parties impartially, and both parties hated us impartially. But one day we heard that the invader was approaching. So we had to pack up and move, of course, and within twentyfour hours he was coming again. So we moved again. Next day he was after us once more. Well, we didn't like it much, but we moved, rather than make trouble. And this went on for a week or ten days, and we saw considerable scenery. Then Ben Tupper's patience was lost. Said he: 'War is not what it's cracked up to be. I'm going home if I can't ever git a chance to sit down a minute. Why do these people keep us a humpin' around so? Blame their skins, do they think this is an excursion?”

"Some of the other town boys got to grumbling. They complained that there was an insufficiency of umbrellas. So I sent around to the farmers and borrowed what I could. Then they complained that the Worcestershire sauce was out. There was mutiny and dissatisfaction all around, and of course, at such a time as this the invader must come around pestering us again; as much as two hours before breakfast, too, when no one wanted to turn out, of course. This was carrying the thing too far. The whole command felt insulted. I detached one of my aides and sent him to the Brigadier, and asked him to assign us a district where

there wasn't so much bother going on. The history of our campaign was laid before him, but instead of being touched by it, what did he do? He sent back an indignant message and said: 'You have had a dozen chances inside of two weeks to capture the enemy and he is still at large. (Well, we knew that!) Stay where you are this time or I will court-martial and hang the whole of you.' Well, I submitted this brutal message to my battalion and asked their advice. Said the Orderly Sergeant: 'If Tom Harris wants the enemy let him come here and get him. I ain't got any use for my share, and who's Tom Harris, anyway, I'd like to know, that's putting on so many frills? Why, I knew him when he wasn't anything but a darned telegraph operator. Gentlemen, you can do as you choose. As for me, I've got enough of this sashaying around so's't you can't get a chance to pray, because the time is all required for cussing, so off goes my war-paint. You hear me!'

The whole regiment said with one voice, "That's the talk for me.' So there and then, on the spot, my brigade disbanded itself and tramped off home, with me in the tail of it. I hung up my own sword and returned to the arts of peace, and there were people who said I hadn't been absent from them yet. We were the first men that went into the service in Missouri; we were the first that went out of it anywhere. This, gentlemen, is the history of the part which my division took in the great rebellion, and such is the military record of its Commander-in-Chief, and this is the first time that the deeds of those warriors have been brought officially to the notice of humanity. Treasure these things in your hearts. And so shall the detected and truculent historians of this land be brought to shame and confusion. I ask you to fill your glasses and drink with me to the reverent memory of the Orderly Sergeant and those other neglected and forgotten heroes, my footsore and travel-stained paladins, who were first in war, first in peace, and were not idle during the interval that lay between."

FAMILY WORSHIP.

From "The Cotter's Saturday Night."

The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,

They round the ingle form a circle wide;
The sire turns o'er, with patriarchal grace,
The big ha'-bible, ance his father's pride;
His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside,
His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare;

Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
He wales a portion with judicious care;

And "Let us worship God!" he says, with solemn air.
They chant their artless notes in simple guise;
They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim:
Perhaps Dundee's wild warbling measures rise,
Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name,
Or noble Elgin beets the heavenward flame,
The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays:

Compared with these, Italian trills are tame;
The tickled ear no heartfelt raptures raise;
Nae unison ha'e they with our Creator's praise.
The priest-like father reads the sacred page—
How Abram was the friend of GOD on high;
Or Moses, bade eternal warfare wage

With Amelek's ungracious progeny;
Or how the royal bard did groaning lie
Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire;
Or Job's pathetic plaint and wailing cry;
Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire;

Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.
Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme-
How guiltless blood for guilty Lan was shed;
How HE, who bore in heaven the second name,
Had not on earth whereon to lay his head:
How his first followers and servants sped
The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:
How he, who lone in Patmos banished,

ROBERT BURNS

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