pot:
there were, in especial, two of the workmen who differed upon the
degree-of-salt question, whose bickers were supplied from the same
general preparation; and as these had usually opposite complaints to
urge against the cooking, their objections served so completely to
neutralize each other, that they in no degree told against the cook. One
morning the cook--a wag and a favourite--in making porridge for both the
controversialists, made it so exceedingly fresh as to be but little
removed from a poultice; and, filling with the preparation in this state
the bicker of the salt-loving connoisseur, he then took a handful of
salt, and mixing it with the portion which remained in the pot, poured
into the bicker of the fresh man, porridge very much akin to a pickle.
Both entered the barrack sharply set for breakfast, and sat down each to
his meal; and both at the first spoonful dropped their spoons. "A
ramming to the cook!" cried the one--"he has given me porridge without
salt!" "A ramming to the cook!" roared out the other--"he has given me
porridge like brine!" "You see, lads," said the cook, stepping out into
the middle of the floor, with the air of a much-injured orator--"you
see, lads, what matters have come to at last: there is the very pot in
which I made in one mess the porridge in both their bickers. I don't
think we should bear this any longer; we have all had our turn of it,
though mine happens to be the worst; and I now move that these two
fellows be rammed." No sooner said than done. There was a terrible
struggling, and a burning sense of injustice; but no single man in the
barrack was match for half-a-dozen of the others. The disputants, too,
instead of making common cause together, were prepared to assist in
ramming each the other; and so rammed they both were. And at length,
when the details of the stratagem came out, the cook--by escaping for
half an hour into the neighbouring wood, and concealing himself there,
like some political exile under ban of the Government--succeeded in
escaping the merited punishment.

The cause of justice was never, I found, in greater danger in our little
community, than when a culprit succeeded in getting the laughers on his
side. I have said that I became a not very bad baker. Still less and
less sorely, as I improved in this useful art, did my cakes try the
failing teeth of my master, until at length they became crisp and nice;
and he began to find that my new accomplishment w