JIM THOMAS' DILEMMA.
During the afternoon Jim and a Yankee picket had been taking alternate shots at each other and it was the Yankee's time to shoot. Jim was nestling up to the Southern side of his tree and thinking possibly of all the meanness he had ever committed in order to feel as small as possible, when a cannon ball crashed through the tree, cutting off its top and sending it by force of gravity, in the direction of his head. He was in a dilemma. If he remained where he was he was liable to be crushed to death by the falling timber, and if he left his cover the picket would probably kill him. Under ordinary circumstances Jim may not have been averse to taking a "horn," but in this dilemma he was undecided which horn to take, whether to bear the ills he had or fly to others, that unfortunately he knew too well.
"All things come to him who waits," but in this case there was something coming that Jim didn't care to wait for. Doing perhaps the rapidest thinking of his life he decided if he had to shuffle off this mortal coil, he would do so in a soldierly way, and leaving the protection of his tree he gave his antagonist a fair shot. Fortunately the aim was bad and Jim lived to laugh over his deliverance from a sea of troubles.