gave me an idea of
Bucky O'Neill's versatility, for I happened to overhear them
discussing Aryan word-roots together, and then sliding off into a
review of the novels of Balzac, and a discussion as to how far Balzac
could be said to be the founder of the modern realistic school of
fiction. Church had led almost as varied a life as Bucky himself, his
career including incidents as far apart as exploring and elk-hunting
in the Olympic Mountains, cooking in a lumber-camp, and serving as
doctor on an emigrant ship.

Woodbury Kane was given a commission, and also Horace Devereux, of
Princeton. Kane was older than the other college men who entered in
the ranks; and as he had the same good qualities to start with, this
resulted in his ultimately becoming perhaps the most useful soldier in
the regiment. He escaped wounds and serious sickness, and was able to
serve through every day of the regiment's existence.

Two of the men made Second Lieutenants by promotion from the ranks
while in San Antonio were John Greenway, a noted Yale foot-ball player
and catcher on her base-ball nine, and David Goodrich, for two years
captain of the Harvard crew. They were young men, Goodrich having only
just graduated; while Greenway, whose father had served with honor in
the Confederate Army, had been out of Yale three or four years. They
were natural soldiers, and it would be well-nigh impossible to
overestimate the amount of good they did the regiment. They were
strapping fellows, entirely fearless, modest, and quiet. Their only
thought was how to perfect themselves in their own duties, and how to
take care of the men under them, so as to bring them to the highest
point of soldierly perfection. I grew steadily to rely upon them, as
men who could be counted upon with absolute certainty, not only in
every emergency, but in all routine work. They were never so tired as
not to respond with eagerness to the slightest suggestion of doing
something new, whether it was dangerous or merely difficult and
laborious. They not merely did their duty, but were always on the
watch to find out some new duty which they could construe to be
theirs. Whether it was policing camp, or keeping guard, or preventing
straggling on the march, or procuring food for the men, or seeing that
they took care of themselves in camp, or performing some feat of
unusual hazard in the fight--no call was ever made upon them to which
they did not respond with eager thankfulness for be