We hadn't three men in the regiment that were not from the south of Ireland,--the _bocca Corkana_ on their lips, fun and devilment in their eyes, and more drollery and humbug in their hearts than in all the messes in the service put together.

No man had any chance among them if he wasn't a real droll one; every man wrote his own songs and sang them too.

It was no small promotion could tempt a fellow to exchange out of the corps.

You may think, then, what a prize your friend Sparks proved to us; we held a court-martial upon him the week after he joined.

It was proved in evidence that he had never said a good thing in his life, and had about as much notion of a joke as a Cherokee has of the Court of Chancery; and as to singing, Lord bless you, he had a tune with wooden turns to it,--it was most cruel to hear; and then the look of him, those eyes, like dropsical oysters, and the hair standing every way, like a field of insane flax, and the mouth with a curl in it like the slit in the side of a fiddle.