. . The colonel was forgotten after dinner. The little
Irish major took the lid off the boiling pot of mirth. He was entirely
mad, as he assured us, between dances of a wild and primitive type,
stories of adventure in far lands, and spasms of asthmatic coughing,
when he beat his breast and said, "A pox in my bleeding heart!"
Falstaff was playing Juliet to the Romeo of the tall young surgeon,
singing falsetto like a fat German angel dressed in loose-fitting
khaki, with his belt undone. There were charades in the tent. The boy
from Barts' did remarkable imitations of a gamecock challenging a
rival bird, of a cow coming through a gate, of a general addressing
his troops (most comical of all). Several glasses were broken. The
corkscrew was disregarded as a useless implement, and whisky-bottles
were decapitated against the tent poles. I remember vaguely the
crowning episode of the evening when the little major was dancing the
Irish jig with a kitchen chair; when Falstaff was singing the Prologue
of Pagliacci to the stupefied colonel; when the boy, once of Barts',
was roaring like a lion under the mess table, and when the tall,
melancholy surgeon was at the top of the tent pole, scratching himself
like a gorilla in his native haunts.
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