Speakin of shufflin off reminds me that Skinny ’lows as how we ought to make our wills before we hit the briny trail.  The only will I’m worried about Julie, is will I cum back?  And that’s no Bullsheveki, fur you know derie when one of them tin fish strikes a transport, yer jest as well let your voice fall.  Say Julie, I’m not fur this country down here a-tall.  It has ticks; chiggers and nats all open fur biz at one and the same time.  You never had a tick on you did you Julie?  Well a dog with two sets of flees isn’t any busier than said tick.  They ought to draft a lot of ’em into the engineers.  They are the best lil’ trench diggers on earth.  They always selects a place between your shoulder blades where you can’t reach ’em and dig in.  The think-tank of a tick is not large; but unless they have been shootin hop into themselves, they can make a guy feel as small as a bar of soap after a hard days washin.  Yours till the kaiser’s mustash droops,

Barney.

P.S.  Skinny sez this means “poor simp” but lissen, derie, fer you it means pretty sweet.

[Illustration:  “Them ticks is the best lil’ trench diggers in the army.”]

Friday the thirteenth.

Dere Julie: 

A bugler is jest as popular round this camp in the a.m. as a roman nose in Russia.  If “yours truly” ever gets a large bunch of the mazuma I’m gonna hire a bugler to blow the revelee every morning at 6 under my window so I can tell him to go to H——.  Skinny sed a Jane he asked to marry him wunce told him to go to the same place; she didn’t jest zactly tell in them words, but sed to go ask her paw.  Now Skinny knowed her “old” man was dead, he also knowed what kind of a life he’d lead, so Skinny was wise to what she ment when she piped “Ask dad.”  If she’d told me that same I would have thought she was flashin a spiel for Sweet Caps.  Skinny says that’s repartee, but I think its rap-artee.  Speakin of Russia, I see by the papers that a new revolution has busted out there.  That God forsaken country reminds me of a fly wheel on a automobeel—­2000 revolutions per minute.

I had a grate peece of luck this a.m.  I had three portions of bacon for breakfast which same happed on account of my bein seated between a young Jewish feller on one side, and a Catholic feller on the other.  It bein Friday—­nuff sed.  Don’t ever try to tell me again that Friday the thirteenth is unlucky.

If I was loose from the army, I could make a million dollars in the umbrella business; its stopped pouring now, but comin in bucket fulls, and we are looking fur orders from Washington any day to begin to build a ark.

Last nite after taps me and Skinny wuz arguin about who wuz to blame for this war.  Confidentially Julie, I think it was Theo.  Roosevelt.  Do you remember Julie, about ten years ago when Theo. was on a trip round the world, he called on Bill the Twicer and Bill got out his army and peeraded them in Theo.’s honor? and Theo. not wantin to be lackin in perliteness, slapped Bill on the back and sed, “Bill with an army like that you can lick the world,” Member him sayin that Julie?  Well he did, and Bill the Two-spot, was d——­ fool enuff to fall fur Theo’s bunk.