the Last of the Mohicans?" Not high wit these, to
ordinary seeming; and yet apparent posers for sensible rhyme. But they
puzzled Randolph not a whit; and--waiving his "grace" until the
subsequent meeting, he rattled off extempore:

"Old Daddy Longlegs was a sinner hoary
And punished for his wickedness, according to the story.
Between him and the Indian shoe, this likeness doth come in,
One made a mock o' virtue, and one a moccasin!"

Laughter and applause were, in mid-roar, cut by Randolph's voice
calling:

_Corollary first:_ If Daddy Longlegs stole the Indian's shoe to
keep his foot warm, that was no excuse for him to steal his house,
to keep his wigwam.

And again he broke down--only to renew--the chorus with:

_Corollary second:_ Because the Indian's shoe did not fit any
Mohawk, was no reason that it wouldn't fit Narragansett!

Such, in brief retrospect was the Mosaic Club! Such in part the fun and
fancy and frolic that filled those winter nights in Richmond, when
sleet and mud made movements of armies, "Heaven bless us! a thing of
naught!"

The old colonel--that staff veteran, so often quoted in these
pages--was a rare, if unconscious humorist. Gourmet born, connoisseur
by instinct and clubman by life habit, the colonel writhed in spirit
under discomfort and camp fare, even while he bore both heroically in
the flesh; his two hundred and sixty pounds of it! Once, Styles Staple
and Will Wyatt met him, inspecting troops in a West Virginia town; and
they received a long lecture, _a la_ Brillat Savarin, on enormities of
the kitchen.

"And these people have fine wines, too," sadly wound up the colonel.
"Marvelous wines, egad! But they don't know how to let you enjoy them!"

"'Tis a hard case," sympathized Styles, "I do hear sometimes of a
fellow getting a stray tea, but as for a dinner! It's no use, colonel;
these people either don't _dine_ themselves, or they imagine we don't."

"Did it ever strike you," said the colonel, waxing philosophic, "that
you _can't_ dine in but two places south of the Potomac? True, sir.
Egad! You may stumble upon a country gentleman with a plentiful larder
and a passable cook, but then, egad, sir! he's an oasis. The mass of
the people South don't live, sir! they vegetate--vegetate and nothing
else. You get watery soups. Then they offer you mellow madeira with
some hot, beastly joint; and oily old sherry with some confounded stew.
Splendid materi