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TRIALS OF A MESSMAN. sweet or not sweet enough, and whether it is good, bad, or indifferent, there is never enough of it. Like most other messmen, I have decided now to make it to suit myself, and have ceased to pay any attention to criticism.

I should not like to finish without expressing my gratitude for one thing. To a lover of human nature it is very gratifying to see artists, geologists, biologists, meteorologists and other ‘ologists’ and ‘ists’ fighting in vast numbers and with earnest purpose, for the privilege of sweeping out the hut after dinner, and relieving the messman of this exercise. I have not liked to thank them to their faces, but thought they might blush unseen when they saw in print my appreciation of their eagerness.

MESSMAN.