The Morristown gazette. [volume] (Morristown, Tenn.) 1867-1920, 1875-03-10
They Sat on a Curry Comb.

batting like hers. One was colonel
of cavalry; four were captains OF
cavalry and Mordecai, imperishable
in the ordnance department, was the
sixth. AS board they sat on the
curry comb.
Since IT'S the United States Gov
ernment has bought, manufactured,
captured. borrowed. found, used the
curry comb. 1t has had full round
ed century of familiarity with the
handle of the curry comb, its teeth,
its back, its sides, its braces, its
shank, its color. If the Government
of the United States may be said to
know anything, it may be said to be
exhaustively acquainted with the cur
ry comb. It marched with it. fought
with it. camped with it, retreated
with it, slept with it, whipped with
it., and got whipped with it, in four
different wars. The curry comb has
rusted and rotted in the hands Of the
Government. It has been the sub
ject of lamentable larceny, waste,
and disappearance. 1t has been the
occasion of courts martial. 1t has
stopped the accounts of quartermas-
ters. 1t has scratched the patience
of auditors of the-Treasury, and rails
ed dust of profanity in department
arithmetic. If the United States last
year didn't know the curry comb,
they didn't know anything.
Yet those six army men sat like
hens on the curry comb. They went
two thousand miles to sit on it. They
sat on the curry comb on January
20. They got off it on May s.. As
the six rose, did a brood of little
curry combs scuttle from under them
and run about scratching imaginary
horses of cavalry and artillery? Oh
no The army hens never hatch.
They only eat rations, and draw pay
and combinations Of allowances.
What did that board of grown up
men sit on that curry comb for?
Unilluminated tax payer! That
was military service. Twas public
employment. The fiction that Unit
ed State army officers should make
some return to the Government for
their free education at West Point
and their genteel support for life pre-
walls yet 10 some extent in the ord
nance department, and among colo
nels and captains of cavalry unat-
tached. SO. annually, when the
weather is pleasantest, when around
Fort Leavenworth, Fort Riley or
Fort Wallace. the prairie chickens
are fattest and the quail the plump
est, they get themselves appointed
as boards to examine something. and
they travel delightfully."- at the pub
lie expense, waited on by soldier
servants whose wages are paid out
of taxes on labor. And they sit on
something. and shoot, eat, sleep,
drink, smoke, and sit again. Last
year they sat on curry comb; this
year they will sit on a bride bit;
the next on the width Of spur strap;
the next on nose bag. The follow
ing financial year will have to bear
the burden of a board travelling three
thosand miles to sit on tent peg.
Why. they would have sat last year
on a horseshoe nail if it had not been
so uncomfortably sharp. But they
got the semblance of employment
out of that nail; they did something
about horseshoe nail which they
airily offset against their West Point
education and their genteel support
for life. They made the horseshoe
nail the subject Of the electoral fran
chise. They organized vote on the
horseshoe nail, and. using the United
States mails. gathered tie ballots of
the officers of all the cavalry regi-
ments to determine which of the diff
ferent kinds of horse nails was the
best.
But the United States army meth
od of electing horseshoe nail by
ballot deserves history By itself.
Oh! ours is wonderful army, espe-
cially down in Louisiana, and it
costs the taxpayers only $50, 100000
a year.