h him there is
no idea so fixed, and no idea so absurd, as that to be comfortable is to
be effeminate. He believes that "roughing it" is synonymous with
hardship, and in season and out of season he plays the Spartan. Any man
who suffers discomforts he can avoid because he fears his comrades will
think he cannot suffer hardships is an idiot. You often hear it said of
a man that "he can rough it with the best of them." Any one can do that.
The man I want for a "bunkie" is the one who can be comfortable while the
best of them are roughing it. The old soldier knows that it is his duty
to keep himself fit, so that he can perform his work, whether his work is
scouting for forage or scouting for men, but you will often hear the
volunteer captain say: "Now, boys, don't forget we're roughing it; and
don't expect to be comfortable." As a rule, the only reason his men are
uncomfortable is because he does not know how to make them otherwise; or
because he thinks, on a campaign, to endure unnecessary hardship is the
mark of a soldier.

In the Cuban campaign the day the American forces landed at Siboney a
major-general of volunteers took up his head-quarters in the house from
which the Spanish commandant had just fled, and on the veranda of which
Caspar Whitney and myself had found two hammocks and made ourselves at
home. The Spaniard who had been left to guard the house courteously
offered the major-general his choice of three bed-rooms. They all were
on the first floor and opened upon the veranda, and to the general's
staff a tent could have been no easier of access. Obviously, it was the
duty of the general to keep himself in good physical condition, to obtain
as much sleep as possible, and to rest his great brain and his limbs
cramped with ten days on shipboard. But in a tone of stern reproof he
said, "No; I am campaigning now, and I have given up all luxuries." And
with that he stretched a poncho on the hard boards of the veranda, where,
while just a few feet from him the three beds and white mosquito nets
gleamed invitingly, he tossed and turned. Besides being a silly
spectacle, the sight of an old gentleman lying wide awake on his
shoulder-blades was disturbing, and as the hours dragged on we repeatedly
offered him our hammocks. But he fretfully persisted in his
determination to be uncomfortable. And he was. The feelings of his
unhappy staff, several of whom were officers of the regular army, who had
to follow t