MULTUM IN PARVO LIBRARY.
Entered at the Boston Post office as second class matter.
VOLUME
OF
ANECDOTES.
Smallest Magazine in the world. Subscription price
50 cts. per year. Single Copies 5 cts. each.
PUBLISHED BY
A. B. COURTNEY,
Room 74, 45 Milk Street,
BOSTON, MASS.
[2]
HUMOR OF THE BATTLEFIELD.
Many humorous incidents, says a writer in theCentury Magazine, occurred on battlefields. AConfederate colonel ran ahead of his regimentat Malvern Hill, and, discovering that the menwere not following him as closely as he wished,he uttered a fierce oath and exclaimed: “Comeon! Do you want to live forever?” The appealwas irresistible, and many a poor fellow who hadlaughed at the colonel’s queer exhortation laiddown his life soon after.
A shell struck the wheel of a Federal fieldpiecetoward the close of the engagement at Fair Oaks,shivering the spokes and dismantling the cannon.“Well, isn’t it lucky that didn’t happenbefore we used up all our ammunition,” said oneof the artillerists as he crawled from beneath thegun.
When General Pope was falling back beforeLee’s advance in the Virginia Valley, his ownsoldiers thought his bulletins and orders somewhat[3]strained in their rhetoric. At one of thenumerous running engagements that marked thedisastrous campaign, a private in one of theWestern regiments was mortally wounded by ashell. Seeing the man’s condition, a chaplainknelt beside him, and, opening his Bible at random,read out Sampson’s slaughter of the Philistineswith the jaw-bone of an ass. He had notquite finished, when, as the story runs, the poorfellow interrupted the reading by saying: “Holdon, chaplain. Don’t deceive a dying man. Isn’tthe name of John Pope signed to that?”
A column of troops was pushing forward overthe long and winding road in Thoroughfare Gapto head off Lee after his retreat across the Potomacat the close of the Gettysburg campaign.Suddenly the signal officer who accompanied thegeneral in command discovered that some of hismen, posted on a high hill in the rear, were reportingthe presence of a considerable body of Confederatetroops on top of the bluffs to their right.A halt was at once sounded, and the leadingbrigade ordered forward to uncover the enemy’sposition. The regiments were soon scramblingup the steep incline, officers and men gallantlyracing to see who could reach the crest first. Ayoung lieutenant and some half dozen men gainedthe advance, but at the end of what they deemed[4]a perilous climb they were thrown into convulsionsof laughter at d