We’ll keep till death.”
The barbarous custom of converting the skulls of enemies into drinking cups was a common one in ancient times among the fierce tribes of Northern Europe; and was not unknown to the more civilized regions of the South. The Italian poet, Marino, makes a conclave of friends in Pandemonium quaff wine from the skull of Minerva. In his “Wonder of a Kingdom,” Torrent makes Dakker say:
“Would I had ten thousand soldiers’ heads,
Their skulls set all in silver, to drink healths
To his confusion who first invented war.”
The old Scandinavian sagas represent as among the delights of the immortals the felicity of feasting and drinking to drunkenness from the skulls of the foes they had vanquished on earth. Mandeville goes further, and represents the Guebres as exposing the dead bodies of their parents to the fowls of the air until nothing but the skeletons remained, and preserving the skulls to be used in a spirit of devotion as drinking cups.
GENERAL WILLIAM W. AVERELL.
Etna, Mo.
Give a short sketch of General Averell.