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THE ANECDOTE GALLERY.


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BROILING STEAKS.

_A Munchausen Story_.


"Talking of broiling steaks--when I was in Egypt we used to broil our
beef-steaks on the locks--no occasion for fire--thermometer at 200--hot
as h-ll! I have seen four thousand men at a time cooking for the whole
army as much as twenty or thirty thousand pounds of steaks at a time, all
hissing and frying at a time--just about noon, of course, you know--not a
spark of fire! Some of the soldiers who had been brought up as
glass-blowers at Leith swore they never saw such heat. I used to go to
leeward of them for a whiff, and think of old England! Ay! that's the
country, after all, where a man may think and say what he pleases! But
that sort of work did not last long, as you may suppose; their eyes were
all fried out, ---- me, in three or four weeks! I had been ill in my bed,
for I was attached to the 72nd regiment, seventeen hundred strong. I had
a party of seamen with me; but the ophthalmia made such ravages, that the
whole regiment, colonel and all, went stone-blind--all, except one
corporal! You may stare, gentlemen, but it's very true. Well, this
corporal had a precious time of it: he was obliged to lead out the whole