Soyer's Culinary Campaign: Being Historical Reminiscences of the Late War.: With The Plain Art of Cookery for Military and Civil Institutions

in the pound and himself in prison. I arrived quite by chance, and he was liberated. As he spoke no French, he was endeavouring to assure them in English that he was not the culprit, but his horse. I explained the case to the French sergeant, and recommended, as a point of justice, as it was the animal’s fault, that he should be put in the stable and the horse in prison. This amused the group of Imperial Guards, who surrounded us by scores, and a few bottles of very, very acid wine, procured at Madame Fleur des Bois’, the mistress of the canteen, terminated in full glee the adventure of my cockney Zouave of Snow-hill in the French camp of the Crimea. Mr. Phillips was an excellent vocalist, and his collection, unlike that of my Zouave Bornet, with his “En avant les Bataillons d’Afrique,” “Storm of Constantine,” “Bravest of the Brave,” “Cannon Ball,” “Shell Polka,” &c., was of a softer nature, including “Sally in our Alley,” who, he pretended, was the love of his heart. Another of his favourite pieces intimated that the soft part of that organ was bursting for the love of Alice Gray, whom he very much wished to meet by moonlight alone, or in company with the “Ratcatcher’s Daughter,” while walking round the garden with “Villikins and his Dinah.” I am induced thus minutely to depict the merits of my Snow-hill Zouave, because he will be so well recognised by those who were in the camp. He was short, fair, fat, and full of London jokes, which he had the fault of laughing at more himself than those did who listened to him. He is a good son, good husband, good father, a good fellow, but a bad punster. The chief evil in the old canteen cooking apparatus was, that it so easily got out of repair. There was no possibility either of mending them or of obtaining new ones, as they were only issued at certain periods. I saw some that had been mended in a most extraordinary style. When the hole was too