for
example, his name is Legion. Why this should be so, we have never
troubled our heads to inquire; we simply accept the fact as it is.
Possibly our floor, that, in spite of a daily brooming and a weekly
sluicing, is ever well carpeted with dust and mud, is one source of
these pests. And, now I think of it, there is a nightly scuffling
underneath the boards, which leads to the conclusion that pigs, dogs,
and fowls, are harbouring among the piles beneath.

Every night, before turning in, we are accustomed to shake whole
regiments of fleas out of our blankets. Not infrequently we sprinkle the
blankets with kerosene oil; and, sometimes, in hot weather find it
necessary to anoint our bodies all over with the same thing. That keeps
off the crawling plagues until we have time to get to sleep, and then
we do not care for them. But I think we really have got hardened to the
fleas. We feel the annoyance of them but little now.

One of the chums, a harmless, peaceable fellow yclept "The Fiend"--I
know not for what particular reason--has lately invented a new game for
our evening's diversion. He calls it flea-loo. After supper it is our
usual custom to sit on the edge of the floor, where it abuts upon the
fireplace. That part of our domicile, it will be remembered, is paved
with a sort of gravel of loose stones, and, sooth to say, with a good
deal of _debris_ of every sort and kind. The stove stands in the middle.
As we sit there, the sensations in our legs remind us that fleas like
warmth too, and that the gravelly bottom of the chimney-place is a
favourite assembly-room of theirs. But they are of aspiring nature, and
this fact was known to the Fiend. Under his advice, each man plants a
stick upright in the gravel before him. Then we make a pool and await
the result. The fleas soon come out, and begin to crawl up the sticks;
and, by-and-by, some individual of the race reaches the top of the
stick. The owner of that stick takes the pool. Here is another gentle
and Arcadian sport.

And now, with considerable trepidation, and with something verging
upon veritable awe, I approach a subject that I feel myself scarcely
competent to handle. Fraught with the deepest interest to every
new-chum, and a matter of no light concern to even the oldest colonist,
it is one that demands an abler and more facile pen than mine to do full
justice to it. Some one has boldly asserted that, throughout the
infinite treasure-house of Nature, every sep