quotable

[Jonathan Lighter]

The Civil War wasn't very funny (one reason the sesquicentennial is a
bust), but they kept trying:


1864 Robert Stewart Davis, in _The United Service Magazine_ I (May) 463
[ref. to August, 1863]:

In that swamp...a pleasant little surprise for Charleston is to be
located,—a single-gun battery, mounting a two-hundred-pound Parrott [Not
what you think. -JL]. Colonel Serrell, of the New York Engineers, has
charge of its construction. But judge of his surprise when one of his
lieutenants, whom he has ordered to take twenty men and enter this swamp,
says that he "cannot do it; the mud is too deep." Colonel Serrell orders
him to try it. He does so, and returns with his men covered with mud, and
says,—

"Colonel, the mud is over my men's heads. I can't do it."

The colonel insists, and tells him to make a requisition for any thing
which is necessary for the safe passage of the swamp. The lieutenant makes
his requisition on the spot, and in writing. It reads as follows:—
"I want twenty men eighteen feet long, to cross a swamp fifteen feet deep."


JL




-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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