CORPORAL HENRY R. NEAVILLE. 193 



slept the sleep of the just under it, leaving the hordes of 

 mosquitoes to sing us a lullaby on the outside, while only 

 a few of them found entrance from the ground. 



Frank said: "I've had enough of this, and I'm going 

 to get up!" And it was morning broad daylight. The 

 dawn had been obscured by the heavy timber and the 

 overturned boat. A breakfast which somehow was much 

 like the supper, in the presence of fresh fish and the 

 absence of salt and everything else, was satisfactory to all 

 but Frank. He said: "If I only had a cup of coffee I 

 wouldn't care." 



"Frank," I replied, "you are not an epicure. There 

 is no more delicious breakfast known than roasted crap- 

 pie cooked without salt and washed down with water 

 from Swift Sloo. Your palate is not educated; coffee 

 just now hot coffee, I mean would spoil the combina- 

 tion; you don't want coffee, nor anything else." 



"Coffee!" exclaimed Henry, "why, coffee would spoil 

 the taste of those delicate crappies, which all epicures eat 

 without salt." And then he added: "Coffee would queer 

 the whole show," a remark which made me ask if he had 

 gone off with Charley Guyon, Montpleasure and the 

 others on their trip into Iowa, and he admitted that he 

 had been the treasurer of the troupe. How little things 

 serve to show what will "queer" a larger thing! I asked: 

 "Henry, what was it that 'queered' our trip?" And he 

 simply answered: "Frank." 



Don't think that Frank was any sort of a "hoodoo" 

 because we guyed him in this way. He was a good, 

 honest boy, but had no taste for camp life hunting, fish- 

 ing and mosquitoes. He afforded plenty of sport to his 

 brother and I because he was green at these things. He 

 wanted to know what there was interesting in seeing a 

 mink kill a muskrat. 



