being his occupation. The adjutant, being
newly married to a gaunt female, who, I hope, nagged him as he us,
_preferred_ to take his meals at home. Smallweed, who had somehow got
made quartermaster, couldn't go old Heavysterne, he said, and so kept as
long as he could to his desultory habits of living as a citizen and a
bachelor. So our mess consisted of the major, who exercised a paternal
care over the rest of us, superintending, indeed often joining in, our
amusements and discussions, our quarrels and makings up; of
Quartermaster-Sergeant Oates, who knew all about everything and
everybody better than anybody, and was always ready to ventilate his
superior knowledge on the slightest provocation, and who, as Smallweed,
now Lieutenant Smallweed, used to say, 'would have made a d----d elegant
quartermaster-sergeant, if he hadn't had a moral objection to issuing
anything;' of Chaplain Bender, a sanctified-looking individual of
promiscuous theology and doubtful morals (the funny men used to speak of
him irreverently as Hell Bender); of the battalion commissary,
Lieutenant Fippany, an unmitigated swell; of Commissary-Sergeant Peck, a
stumpy little fellow, full of facts and figures, and always quiet and
ready; of the writer, Sergeant-Major Jenkins, or Jinkens as my name used
to be mispronounced, infinitely to my disgust; and lastly,
semi-occasionally, of the sutler, Mr. Cann. The surgeon, old Doctor
Peacack, ran a separate mess, consisting of himself, the assistant
surgeon, Dr. Launcelot Cutts, and hospital steward Spatcheloe.

The drum-major, Musician Tappit, having refused to be mustered in, and
the War Department having presently refused to let us have any musicians
at all, used to appear only on parades, gorgeous in his gray uniform and
ornamental red stomach, disappearing with exemplary regularity, and
diving into his upholsterer's cap and baize apron upon the slightest
prospect of work or danger. I don't think it was ever my bad fortune to
eat more unpleasant meals than those eaten at our mess table. The
officers, excepting the major, but specially including the chaplain,
used to insist on being helped first and excessively to everything; also
on inviting their friends to dine on our plates, there being no extra
ones; also on giving us the broken chairs, one in particular, that was
cracked in a romp between the chaplain and the adjutant, and that
pinched you when you sat on it. Then Lieutenant Harch was always playing
a