All These
Things Appertaining To The Tent Should Be Tolled Up In It, And The
Tent Itself Carried In A Light-Weight Receptacle, With A Running
Noose Like A Sailor's Kit-Bag.
The carry-all has already been described.
Of its contents, I
consider first in importance the folding bed.
And second in importance I would place a folding chair. Many men
scoff at a chair as a cumbersome luxury. But after a hard day on
foot or in the saddle, when you sit on the ground with your back to a
rock and your hands locked across your knees to keep yourself from
sliding, or on a box with no rest for your spinal column, you begin
to think a chair is not a luxury, but a necessity. During the Cuban
campaign, for a time I was a member of General Sumner's mess. The
general owned a folding chair, and whenever his back was turned every
one would make a rush to get into it. One time we were discussing
what, in the light of our experience of that campaign, we would take
with us on our next, and all agreed, Colonel Howze, Captain Andrews,
and Major Harmon, that if one could only take one article it would be
a chair. I carried one in Manchuria, but it was of no use to me, as
the other correspondents occupied it, relieving each other like
sentries on guard duty. I had to pin a sign on it, reading, "Don't
sit on me," but no one ever saw the sign.
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