Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 December 1884 — Near Enough. [ARTICLE]

Near Enough.

During the campaign of the First Regiment at Santa Rosa the pickets found considerable difficulty in preventing the men from absenting themselves without leave—a circumstance for which the mint-juleps of the town bar-rooms and the large contingent of pretty Santa Rosa girls—small blame to them—were chiefly accountable. One particularly sultry evening, while the sentinels were pacing their beats with their tongues fairly hanging out of their mouths with heat, and wondering whether the pirates in the mess-tent would drink every last drop of beer before the “relief” came, one of the guards observed a private approaching, who was staggering along under the combined load of much conviviality and an enormous watermelon under each arm. “Who goes there?” “Er—hie—er fren’,” responded the truant. “Advance, friend, and give the countersign.” ”Hain’ got no—hie—countersign,” amiably replied the private; "but I’ll er—-hie—give yer er—hie—watermellin.” Pretty soon the officer of the day came round and said to the sentinel, who was absorbed in munching a huge piece of watermelon stuck on the end of his bayonet: “Did Perkins pass you just now?” “Yessir.” “Did he give you the countersign?” inquired the Lieutenant, taking a bite himself, as the man presented arms. “Well, no, sir,” said the sentinel, confidently. “The password was ‘Cholera,’ but he said ‘Watermelon,’so I passed him and put the other half in your tent.” “Did, eh?” mused the officer. “Hum! watermelon, eh? Well, I guess that was near enough!” —San Francisco Post. At a convent where light literature is forbidden: “My child, what are you reading?” “The life of one of the saints, sister.” “What saint, my child?” “St. Elmo!” Sister passes on to the next dormitory. A couplet of vqrse, a period of prose, may cling to the Rock of Ages as a shell that survives a deluge.—Bulwer Lytton. The Bible has just been translated into Zulu.