fires, made with one poor handful of splinters.  When the sun shone, more activity was visible.  Boys wandered around, hunted up their friends, and saw what gaps death—­always busiest during the cold spells—­had made in the ranks of their acquaintances.  During the warmest part of the day everybody disrobed, and spent an hour or more killing the lice that had waxed and multiplied to grievous proportions during the few days of comparative immunity.

Besides the whipping of the Galvanized by the darkies, I remember but two other bits of amusement we had while at Florence.  One of these was in hearing the colored soldiers sing patriotic songs, which they did with great gusto when the weather became mild.  The other was the antics of a circus clown—­a member, I believe, of a Connecticut or a New York regiment, who, on the rare occasions when we were feeling not exactly well so much as simply better than we had been, would give us an hour or two of recitations of the drolleries with which he was wont to set the crowded canvas in a roar.  One of his happiest efforts, I remember, was a stilted paraphrase of “Old Uncle Ned” a song very popular a quarter of a century ago, and which ran something like this: 

There was an old darky, an’ his name was Uncle Ned,
But he died long ago, long ago
He had no wool on de top of his head,
De place whar de wool ought to grouw.

          Chorus
          Den lay down de shubel an’ de hoe,
          Den hang up de fiddle an’ de bow;
          For dere’s no more hard work for poor Uncle Ned
          He’s gone whar de good niggahs go.

His fingers war long, like de cane in de brake,
And his eyes war too dim for to see;
He had no teeth to eat de corn cake,
So he had to let de corn cake be.

          Chorus.

His legs were so bowed dat he couldn’t lie still. 
An’ he had no nails on his toes;

His neck was so crooked dot he couldn’t take a pill,
So he had to take a pill through his nose.

          Chorus.

One cold frosty morning old Uncle Ned died,
An’ de tears ran down massa’s cheek like rain,
For he knew when Uncle Ned was laid in de groun’,
He would never see poor Uncle Ned again,

          Chorus.

In the hands of this artist the song became—­

There was an aged and indigent African whose cognomen was Uncle Edward, But he is deceased since a remote period, a very remote period; He possessed no capillary substance on the summit of his cranium, The place designated by kind Nature for the capillary substance to vegetate.

Chorus. 
Then let the agricultural implements rest recumbent upon the ground;
And suspend the musical instruments in peace neon the wall,
For there’s no more physical energy to be displayed by our Indigent Uncle
          Edward
He has departed to that place set apart by a beneficent Providence for
          the reception of the better class of Africans.