And now if the spirit of Poe will pardon me,
All this dark and dread suspicion
Of such canine deglutition,
As it crossed his mental vision
Leading not to height elysian,
Made him sad and made him sadder,
Made him mad and made him madder,
And his soul from out its shadow
Shall be lifted, nevermore.
For weeks and months, and indeed until the war closed, this canine ghost would never down. He was not allowed to forget it. He was taunted and barked at and dogged so constantly that no Lethean waters could wash out the maddening memory. And the bitterness of it all was that the perpetrators of the joke would give no intimation as to the special breed that graced his table that winter day, whether
"Mongrel, puppy, whelp or hound
Or cur of low degree."
The size of the ham precluded the possibility of its having been a bench-legged fice, but there was the torturing reflection that it might have been what Mark Twain has termed the Ishmael of his race, the "yaller dog," who if Mark is to be credited, has been "cursed in all his generations and relations in his kindred by consanguinity and affinity and in his heirs and assigns—cursed with endless hunger with perpetual fear with perennial laziness with hopeless mange, with incessant fleas and with his tail between his legs."
These unpleasant reflections were, however, not confined to the officer in command of the provost guard. A part of the meat had been sent to brigade headquarters and it was said that an aide on the general's staff, who had eaten very freely of the dish, suffered on learning of its origin so serious a gastric disturbance that he vomited, as a colored brother once put it, from Genesis to Revelations.
"I know not how the truth may be,
I tell the tale as 'twas told to me."
Regretting my inability, for reasons already stated, to answer this inquiry more definitely, I can only say in conclusion as I heard Bob Toombs once say in another connection, "In spite of compromises, concessions and constitutions this question still marches onward for its solution," who ate the dog?
WHERE IS THE OVEN?
Army life is not specially conducive to personal cleanliness, nor to a high regard for the minor proprieties of life. A young lady visiting Camp McKenzie, near Augusta, Ga., during the Spanish-American war, was shocked by seeing a soldier drop a piece of bread upon the ground and after picking it up resume its mastication. If this sketch should meet her eye, that feeling will probably be reawakened and intensified: