ifferent, and perhaps much greater than I contemplated. Nor can I bring
myself to belive that they are necessary. I am trying to be entirely
willing to peril life and limb on the field of battle, but instead of
placing me where I can do this, and allowing me to concentrate all my
energies upon that object, I am kept for months chafing under the petty
tyrannies of a bullying officer, and deprived of most of the comforts
that I have heretofore regarded as necessary to my existence. What good
can be accomplished by diverting forces which should be devoted to
the main struggle into this ignoble channel? That's what puzzles and
irritates me."

"It seems to be one of the inseparable conditions of the higher forms of
achievement that they require vastly more preparation for them than the
labor of doing them."

"That's no doubt very philosophical, but it's not satisfactory, for all
that."

"My dear boy, learn this grand truth now: That philosophy is never
satisfactory; it is only mitigatory. It consists mainly in saying with
many fine words: 'What can't be cured must be endured.'"

"I presume that is so. I wish, though, that by the mere syaing so, I
could make the endurance easier."

"I can make your lot in the service easier."

"Indeed! how so?"

"By having you appointed my Hospital Steward. I have not secured one
yet, and the man who is acting as such is so intemperate that I feel a
fresh sense of escape with every day that passes without his mistaking
the oxalic acid for Epsom salts, to the destruction of some earnest but
constipated young patriot's whole digestive viscera.

"If you accept this position," continued the Surgeon, flinging away his
refractory cigar in disgust, and rising to get a fresh one, "you will
have the best rank and pay of any non-commissioned officer in the
regiment; better, indeed, than that of a Second Lieutenant. You will have
your quarters here with me, and be compelled to associate with no one
but me, thus reducing your disagreeable companions at a single stroke,
to one. And you will escape finally from all subserviency to Lieutenant
Alspaugh, or indeed to any other officer in the regiment, except your
humble servant. As to food, you will mess with me."

"Those are certainly very strong inducements," said Harry, meditating
upon the delightfulness of relief from the myriad of rasping little
annoyances which rendered every day of camp-life an infliction.

"Yes, and still farther, you will