ery little
additional preparation was required to qualify the inmate of the Lyceum
for the duties and privations of the soldier's life. The transition
was not unnatural; and the boy who breakfasted in the open air, in
midwinter, on a piece of dry bread and as much water as he chose to pump
for himself,--who was turned adrift, without cap or overcoat, from the
study-room into the storm or sunshine of an open enclosure, to amuse
himself in his recess as he best might,--whose continual talk with his
comrades was of the bivouac or the battle-field,--and who considered the
great object of life to be the development of faculties best fitted to
excel in the art of destruction, would not be astonished to find himself
sleeping on the bare ground with a levy of raw conscripts.

I was in daily intercourse with several hundred young men, and it
may not be uninteresting to dwell a moment on the character of my
companions, especially as they may be considered a fair type of the
youth of France generally at that time. It is, moreover, a topic with
which few are familiar. There were not many Americans in that country at
that period. I knew of only one at school in Paris beside myself.

If the brilliant glories of the Empire dazzled the mature mind of
age, they wrought into delirium the impulsive brain of youth, whose
impressions do not wait for any aid from the judgment, but burn into the
soul, never to be totally effaced. The early boyhood of those with whom
I was associated had been one of continual excitement. Hardly had the
hasty but eloquent bulletin told the Parisians that the name of another
bloody field was to be inscribed among the victories of France, and the
cannon of the Invalides thundered out their notes of triumph, when again
the mutilated veterans were on duty at their scarcely cooled pieces and
the newswomen in the streets were shrilly proclaiming some new triumph
of the imperial arms. Then came the details, thrilling a warlike people,
and the trophies which symbolized success,--banners torn and stained
in desperate conflict, destined to hang over Christian altars until the
turning current of fortune should drift them back,--parks of artillery
rumbling through the streets, to be melted into statue or triumphal
column,--and, amid the spoils of war, everything most glorious in Art to
fill that wondrous gallery, the like of which the eye of man will never
look upon again. At last, in some short respite of those fighting d