ce neon the wall,
For there's no more physical energy to be displayed by our Indigent Uncle
Edward
He has departed to that place set apart by a beneficent Providence for
the reception of the better class of Africans.

And so on. These rare flashes of fun only served to throw the underlying
misery out in greater relief. It was like lightning playing across the
surface of a dreary morass.

I have before alluded several times to the general inability of Rebels to
count accurately, even in low numbers. One continually met phases of
this that seemed simply incomprehensible to us, who had taken in the
multiplication table almost with our mother's milk, and knew the Rule of
Three as well as a Presbyterian boy does the Shorter Catechism.
A cadet--an undergraduate of the South Carolina Military Institute
--called our roll at Florence, and though an inborn young aristocrat, who
believed himself made of finer clay than most mortals, he was not a bad
fellow at all. He thought South Carolina aristocracy the finest gentry,
and the South Carolina Military Institute the greatest institution of
learning in the world; but that is common with all South Carolinians.

One day he came in so full of some matter of rare importance that we
became somewhat excited as to its nature. Dismissing our hundred after
roll-call, he unburdened his mind:

"Now you fellers are all so d---d peart on mathematics, and such things,
that you want to snap me up on every opportunity, but I guess I've got
something this time that'll settle you. Its something that a fellow gave
out yesterday, and Colonel Iverson, and all the officers out there have
been figuring on it ever since, and none have got the right answer, and
I'm powerful sure that none of you, smart as you think you are, can do
it."

"Heavens, and earth, let's hear this wonderful problem," said we all.

"Well," said he, "what is the length of a pole standing in a river,
one-fifth of which is in the mud, two-thirds in the water, and one-eighth
above the water, while one foot and three inches of the top is broken
off?"

In a minute a dozen answered, "One hundred and fifty feet."

The cadet could only look his amazement at the possession of such an
amount of learning by a crowd of mudsills, and one of our fellows said
contemptuously:

"Why, if you South Carolina Institute fellows couldn't answer such
questions as that they wouldn't allow you in the infant class up Nort