rightly and
originally written d'Un Lap; and said that if it were translated into
English it would mean Peterson: Lap, Latin or Greek, he said, for stone
or rock, same as the French Pierre, that is to say, Peter; d', of or
from; un, a or one; hence d'Un Lap, of or from a stone or a Peter; that
is to say, one who is the son of a stone, the son of a Peter--Peterson.
Our militia company were not learned, and the explanation confused them;
so they called him Peterson Dunlap. He proved useful to us in his way;
he named our camps for us, and he generally struck a name that was 'no
slouch,' as the boys said.

That is one sample of us. Another was Ed Stevens, son of the town
jeweller,--trim-built, handsome, graceful, neat as a cat; bright,
educated, but given over entirely to fun. There was nothing serious in
life to him. As far as he was concerned, this military expedition of
ours was simply a holiday. I should say that about half of us looked
upon it in the same way; not consciously, perhaps, but unconsciously. We
did not think; we were not capable of it. As for myself, I was full of
unreasoning joy to be done with turning out of bed at midnight and four
in the morning, for a while; grateful to have a change, new scenes, new
occupations, a new interest. In my thoughts that was as far as I went; I
did not go into the details; as a rule one doesn't at twenty-five.

Another sample was Smith, the blacksmith's apprentice. This vast donkey
had some pluck, of a slow and sluggish nature, but a soft heart; at one
time he would knock a horse down for some impropriety, and at another he
would get homesick and cry. However, he had one ultimate credit to his
account which some of us hadn't: he stuck to the war, and was killed in
battle at last.

Jo Bowers, another sample, was a huge, good-natured, flax-headed lubber;
lazy, sentimental, full of harmless brag, a grumbler by nature; an
experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar,
and yet not a successful one, for he had had no intelligent training,
but was allowed to come up just any way. This life was serious enough to
him, and seldom satisfactory. But he was a good fellow, anyway, and
the boys all liked him. He was made orderly sergeant; Stevens was made
corporal.

These samples will answer--and they are quite fair ones. Well, this herd
of cattle started for the war. What could you expect of them? They did
as well as they knew how, but really what was justly t