It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, and the boys were already busy. They had an immense camp-kettle about two thirds full of parboiled beans. Near by they had dug a hole in the ground, about three feet square and two deep, in which and on top of which a great fire was to be made about dusk, so as to get the hole thoroughly heated and full of red-hot coals by the time tattoo sounded. Into this hole the camp-kettle was then set, with several pounds of fat pork on the top of the beans, and securely covered with an inverted mess-pan. It was sunk into the red-hot coals, by which it was completely concealed, and was left there all night to bake, one of the camp-guards throwing a log on the fire from time to time during the night, to keep matters a-going.
Early the next morning some one shook me roughly, as I lay sleeping soundly in my bunk,—
"Get up, Harry. Breakfast is ready. Come over to our tent. If you never ate baked beans before, you never ate anything worth eating."
I found three or four of the boys seated around the camp-kettle, each with a tin plate on his knee and a spoon in his hand, doing their very best to establish the truth of the adage that "the proof of the pudding is in the eating." Now it is a far more difficult matter to describe the experiences of the palate than of either the eye or the ear, and therefore I shall not attempt to tell the reader how very good baked beans are. The only trouble with a camp-kettle full of this delicious food was that it was gone so soon. Where did it get to, anyhow? It was something like Father Tom's quart of drink,—"an irrational quantity, because it was too much for one and too little for two."
Still, too much of a good thing is too much; and one might get quite too much of beans (except in the state above described), as you will find if you ask some friend or acquaintance who was in the war to sing you the song of "The Army Bean." And remember, please, to ask him to sing the refrain to the tune sometimes called "Days of Absence," and to pull up sharp on the last word,—
"Beans for breakfast,
Beans for dinner,
Beans for supper,—
Beans!"