CONTAMINATION, DEATH FROM
For the soldier in the far-away Philippines, death lurks in many places. Perhaps it is the enemy in the open, or the shot from the thicket, or the assassin’s knife in the dark. These are not the deadliest foes, however. The cholera is everywhere. Man can guard against the one, but he falls a victim to the other. Not long since a certain constabulary officer had met the enemy and defeated them. Before he reached camp on the return march, however, disease laid hold upon him for its own. Ere he reached the camp he was dead. In trying to explain that sudden demise, a companion of the march said:
When we stopt at shacks on the roadside and asked for water it was furnished us in a coconut shell with the native’s thumb dipt in and the water so muddy one could not see the bottom, but down it went with some jest about a cool death.
The thumb of the native, dipt in the shell of water, brought death to the drinker. There is another sort of cup in which lurks the serpent of death—the wine cup.
(563)
Contempt of Patriotism—See [Memorials of Patriotism].
CONTENT
Robert Trowbridge wrote for Scribner’s Magazine the following verse:
My neighbor hath a little field,
Small store of wine its presses yield,