Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1899-05-06

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/ The Ramrod Corps.
| People who have seen state that one
of the quaintest spectacles of human
frailty is an outbreak of Mysteries in a
girls school. 1t starts without warning,
generally on a hot afternoon, among
the elder pupils. A girl giggles till the
giggle gets beyond control Then she
throws up her head and cries, "Honk,
honk, honkr' like a wild goose, and
tears mix with the laughter If the
mistress be wise. she will say something
severe at this point to check matters
drink of water, the chances are large
" in favor of another girl laughing at
the afflicted one and herself collapsing.
Thus the trouble spreads and may end
sixth of a boys school rocking and
whooping together. Given week of
warm weather, two stately promenades
per diem, heavy mutton and rice meal
in the middle of the day, certain
amount of nagging from the teachers
and a few other things, some really
amazing effects can be secured At
least this is what folk say who have had
experience
Now, the mother superior of a con-
vent and the colonel of q British infan
try regiment would be justly shocked
~ o,,x, or,,, no con boiy,os mode bo+U,ooD
their respective charges. But it is a
fact that under certain circumstances
Thomas in bulk can be worked up into
ditthering ripping hysteria. He does
not weep, but he shows his trouble IN
mistakably, and the consequences get
into the newspapers, and all the good
and virtuous people who hardly know a
Martini from a Snider say, ''Take
away the brute ammunition
Thomas ism brute, and his bust
ness, which is to look after the virtuous
people. demands that he shall have his
ammunition to his hand. He doesn' t
wear silk stockings and he really ought
to be supplied with a new adjective to
help him to express his opinions, but,
for all that, he is a great man. If you
call him 1.-THE heroic defender of the ma
tional honor one day and "a brutal
and licentious soldiery'' the next, you
naturally bewilder him, and he looks
upon you with suspicion. There is no
body to speak for Thomas except people
who have theories to work off on him,
and nobody understands Thomas except
Thomas, and he does not know what is
the matter with himself
That is the prologue. This is the
story
Corporal Slane was engaged to be
married to Miss Jhansi McKenna, whose
history is well known in the regiment
and elsewhere. He had secured his colo
mel s leave, and, being popular with the
men, every arrangement had been made
to give the wedding what Private Or
theris called ''eeklar It fell in the
heart of the hot weather, and after the
wedding Slane was going up to the
hills with the. bride. None the less,
Slane's grievance was that the affair
would be only a hired carriage we'd
ding, and he felt that the ''eeklar'' of
that was meager Miss McKenna did
not care so much. The sergeant's wife
was helping her to make her wedding
dress. and she was very busy. Slane
was. just then, the only moderately
contented man in barracks. All the rest
were more or less miserable.
And they had so much to make them
happy tool All their work was over at
s in the morning, and for the rest Of
the day they could lie on their backs
and smoke canteen plug and swear at
the punkah coolies. They enjoyed a
fine, full flesh meal in the middle of the
day and then threw themselves down
on their cots and sweated and slept till
it was cool enough to go out with their
"towny, whose vocabulary contained
less than 500 words and the adjective
and whose views on every conceivable
question they had heard many months
before.
There was the canteen of course, and
there was the temperance room with
the secondhand papers in it, but man
of any profession cannot read for eight
hours a day in temperature of SO or
SO degrees in the shade, running up
sometimes to 103 degrees at midnight
Very few men, even though they get
pannikin of fiat, stale, muddy beer and
hide it under their cots, can continue
drinking for six hours day One man
tried but he died, and nearly the
whole regiment went to his funeral be-
cause it gave them something to do 1t
was too early for the modified excite
ment of fever or cholera The men
could only wait and wait and wait and
watch the shadow of the barrack creep
ing across the binding white dust.
That was gay life!
They. lounged about environments
It was too hot for any sort of game
and almost too hot for vice-and hud-
died themselves in the evening and filled
themselves to distension with the
healthy heterogeneous food provided for
them, and the more they stocked the less
exercise they took and more explosive
they grew. Then the tempers began to
wear away. and men fell a-brooding
over insults real or imaginary. They
had nothing else to think of The tone