KILLED BY IMAGINATION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1265, 28 May 1896, Page 39

KILLED BY IMAGINATION.

“ ]n my opinion,” remarked the college professor, who rose from the ranks during the last war to the position of Colonel, “Hie imagination of men does more injury to tho cause of courage than all the appliances of war yet discovered. I had a remarkable case happen tome during the ),aides around Richmond. That is to say, it happened 1o another man, but I was part of it. It was on a skirmish line, anil I was lying behind a log with two other men I was only a private then one of whom was an inveterate joker, and tho other was ono of the imaginative kind of soldiers. In iact, ho was so imaginative that he was almost scared out of his wits, and when bullets and shells began flying through the woods, cutting oil' saplings, clipping limbs all around us, and harking tho top of tho log behind which we lay, 1 thought the fellow would burst a blood-vessel, or go crazy, or d,, (some other fool thing unbecoming a soldier. Tom, the joker, noticed tho man’s terror, am! call* d my attention to it. “ Then he reached out and dragged in a stick cut from (ho trees above us by a bullet, and fixing a pin ill it proceeded to have his fun. The man was at 1 he far end of our log, ten feet from Tom, and I was just be vend Tom on the other side, and, 1 am free to confess, was nervous enough to wonder at Tom’s manner at such a time. However, I couldn’t help watch-' jug his movements, and actually laughed to”seo him sliding tho pin-pointed, stick along toward the unsuspecting victim. Having got it at tho right distance, ho waited for a smashing volley of bullets, and just as it came he prodded tho soldier in the back with the pin. Well, it was really funny to see tho chap jump and yell and roll over, and wo both fairly howled. But it wasn’t so funny when tho man didn’t move alter his first startled action, and Tom looked around at me in a scared kind of way. His surprise found expression in an oath, and he called to the man. There was no answer, and lie called again, with the same result. Then ho crept over to him, ami gave him a shake. That brought; no response either, and Tom dragged him around so that he could see his face. It was an ashy blue, with tho eyes staring wide open, and tho man xvas as dead as Julius Caesar, with never a mark on him save, perhaps, that ono pin scratch in his back.”