ven those of high rank,--"Military life is not my profession;
I entered the army from patriotism, willing to serve my country
faithfully for three years, but of course not pretending to perfection
in every trivial detail of a pursuit which I shall soon quit forever."
But it is patriotism to think the details _not_ trivial. If one gives
one's self to one's country, let the gift be total and noble. These
details are worthy to absorb the whole daily thought, and they should
absorb it, until more thorough comprehension and more matured executive
power leave room for larger studies, still in the line of the adopted
occupation. If a man leaves his office or his study to be a soldier, let
him be a soldier in earnest. Let those three years bound the horizon of
his plans, and let him study his new duty as if earth offered no other
conceivable career. The scholar must forswear his pen, the lawyer his
books, the politician his arts. An officer of whatever rank, who does
not find occupation enough for every day, amid the quietest
winter-quarters, in the prescribed duties of his position and the
studies to which they should lead, is fitted only for civil pursuits,
and had better return to them.

Without this thoroughness, life in the army affords no solid
contentment. What is called military glory is a fitful and uncertain
thing. Time and the newspapers play strange tricks with reputations, and
of a hundred officers whose names appear with honor in this morning's
despatches ninety may never be mentioned again till it is time to write
their epitaphs. Who, for instance, can recite the names of the
successive cavalry-commanders who have ridden on their bold forays
through Virginia, since the war began? All must give place to the latest
Kautz or Sheridan, who has eclipsed without excelling them all. Yet each
is as brave and as faithful to-day, no doubt, as when he too glittered
for his hour before all men's gaze, and the obscurer duty may be the
more substantial honor. So when I lift my eyes to look on yonder level
ocean-floor, the fitful sunshine now glimmers white on one far-off sail,
now on another; and yet I know that all canvas looks snowy while those
casual rays are on it, and that the best vessel is that which, sunlit or
shaded, best accomplishes its destined course. The officer is almost as
powerless as the soldier to choose his opportunity or his place.
Military glory may depend on a thousand things,--the accident of local
posi