hey die?"

"That depends a good deal on whether a political pull is any good
over there," said Uncle Ike, as he reached for the yellow paper of
tobacco and filled up the clay pipe again. "_I think a soldier is the
noblest work of God_. A young man who has got everything just as he
wants it at home, parents who love him, and perhaps a girl who believes
he is the dearest man that ever wore a choker collar; who hears that his
country needs help, and gives up his spring mattress, his happy home,
his evenings with the dearest girl in the world, gives up baking powder
biscuits and strawberry shortcake, and enlists to go to Cuba, and sleeps
on the ground in the mud, gets malaria, and fights on his knees when he
is too weak to stand up, deserves something better than decayed meat,
and I believe the people who furnished that stuff for the boys are going
right straight to hell when they die," and a look of revenge and horror
and indignation came over the old man's face that the boy had not seen
before in all the years he had known his uncle. "No, sir," said he;
"the smell of that canned beef will stick to the garments of those who
prepared it and those who furnished it to those boys; and if one of them
got into heaven by crawling under the canvas, every angel there would
hold her nose and make up a face, and they would send for the devil
with his pitchfork to' throw him out. The verdict of no board of
investigation is going to be received as a passport to heaven."

[Illustration: A dog biscuit would have been mince pie 011]

"Why, a dog biscuit would have been mince pie to the soldiers in
comparison to the stuff the rich beef packers furnished to those young
noblemen with the kyack uniforms on. To make a little more money, men
who have millions of dollars to burn, bilked a weak and overworked set
of officials with incipient paresis and locomotor ataxia in their walk
and conversation, and sawed on to them stuff that self-respecting pigs
could not have digested without taking pepsin tablets; and with that
embalmed and canned outrage on humanity in their stomachs those brave
men charged in the face of an enemy, and were hungry heroes, loaded with
decayed beef from a country that produces the finest food in the world.
Tramps, begging at the back gates of American homes, were living on
the fat of the land; dogs could gnaw fresh and sweet meat off of bones
thrown away, and laugh at our soldiers carrying Old Glory to victory
up hills