At length dinner is over. Beds are drawn up from the sides of the room so as to form a wide circle of divans round the fire, and the big barrel's time has come at last. A clever hand whips out the bung, draws a pailful, and reinserts the bung till another pailful is wanted, which will be very soon. The pail is placed upon the hearthstone and its contents are decanted into the pint basins, which do duty in the barrack-room for all purposes from containing coffee and soup to mixing chrome-yellow and pipe-clay water. The married soldiers come dropping in with their wives, for whom the corporal has a special drop of "something short" stowed in reserve on the shelf behind his kit. A song is called for; another follows, and yet another and another. Now it is matter of notice that the songs of soldiers are never of the modern music-hall type. You might go into a hundred barrack-rooms or soldier's haunts and never hear such a ditty as "Champagne Charley" or "Not for Joseph." The soldier takes especial delight in songs of the sentimental pattern; and even when for a brief period he forsakes the region of sentiment, it is not to indulge in the outrageously comic but to give vent to such sturdy bacchanalian outpourings as the "Good Rhine Wine," "Old John Barleycorn," and "Simon the Cellarer." But these are only interludes. "The Soldier's Tear," "The White Squall," "There came a Tale to England," "Ben Bolt," "Shells of the Ocean," and other melodies of a lugubrious type, are the special favourites of the barrack-room. I remember once hearing a cockney recruit attempt "The Perfect Cure" with its accompanying gymnastic efforts; but he was I not appreciated, and indeed, I think broke down in the middle for want of encouragement.