“You’ve been drinking,” said the surgeon,
  “You’ve been drinking on the sly. 
  You’ve been disobeying orders;
  ’Tis useless to deny. 
  Let me tell you on the Q. T.
  That I am going to mark you ‘duty’
  You’ve been drinking unboiled water
  I can read it in your eye.”

  I’ve a bunkie who is a restless dog,
  And he doesn’t care a fig,
  So they marched him to the guard-house
  And they made him do fatigue. 
  He’s a gamblin’, ramblin’ rascal,
  An all around jovial sport. 
  They had him up the other day
  Before a summary court.

  “Charged with drinking,” says the captain,
  And he seemed to “wink an eye.” 
  “For you could not stand temptation
  And you drank when you was dry. 
  You are grinning, Private Brady,
  And you will draw five less next pay-day,
  And for drinking unboiled water
  Don’t forget I cinched you high.”

  Since old Pharoah followed Moses,
  And was followed by the sea,
  Sergeant Potter’s been a soldier
  And ’til Gabriel’s reveille
  He’ll be answering to the bugle call
  At sunset, noon, and morn,
  But he’s got the Dengue fever,
  And it makes him flush and worn.

  “You’ve been drinking unboiled water,”
  Says the captain, “that is why.” 
  “No, the captain is mistaken,”
  Says the sergeant with a sigh. 
  “I never do drink water,
  Though maybe at times I aught’er;
  I never do drink water
  When ‘John Stink’ and Tuba’s nigh.”

  The band it played a mournful tune;
  The soldiers crowd around
  As a comrade wrapped in Glory’s flag
  Is lowered in the ground. 
  There are three resounding volleys,
  Taps die out in tender tones
  And we’re marching to the quick step
  From the grave of Corporal Jones.

  “It was drinking,” says the captain
  As a tear was in his eye. 
  “It was all through drinking water
  That the corporal came to die. 
  ’Twas the unboiled water that killed him,
  With germs and things it filled him
  But now he is drinking from the Jordan
  Where we’ll join him by and by.”

A CYNIC’S VIEW OF ARMY LIFE

  Once I was a farmer boy, a tiller of the soil,
  I liked the work—­I never was a chap to shirk from toil. 
  But I thought I’d choose a broader life (I must have been an ass). 
  I took on in the Army—­and now I’m cutting grass.

  I thought my farm life narrow, for there my simple work
  Was planting things and tending them, and this I did not shirk. 
  I’d charge of all the horses, too, and handled them first class,
  But since I joined the Army, I am simply cutting grass.

  I get up in the morning to the sound of martial strain. 
  The sergeant says:  “Go get that scythe and sharpen it again. 
  The grass has grown six inches, men, while we have been in bed,
  So hustle, soldiers, hustle—­don’t let it get ahead.”