closer in their places, and the left wing be able to keep better in
line, in coming on.'--Another time, having observed, in a certain
Foot-regiment, that the soldiers were too long in getting out their
cartridges, he said to the Commandant: 'Do you know the cause of this,
my dear Colonel? Look, the cartouche, in the cartridge-box, has 32
holes; into these the fellow sticks his eight cartridges, without caring
how: and so the poor devil fumbles and gropes about, and cannot get hold
of any. But now, if the Officers would look to it that he place them
all well together in the middle of the cartouche, he would never make
a false grasp, and the loading would go as quick again. Only tell your
Officers that I had made this observation, and I am sure they will
gladly attend to it.'" [Anonymous (Kaltenborn), _Briefe eines alten
Preussischen Officiers_ (Hohenzollern, 1790), ii. 24-26.]

Of humane consolatory Anecdotes, in this kind, our Opposition Kaltenborn
gives several; of the rhadamanthine desolating or destructive kind,
though such also could not be wanting, if your Assize is to be good for
anything, he gives us none. And so far as I can learn, the effective
punishments, dismissals and the like, were of the due rarity and
propriety; though the flashes of unjust rebuke, fulminant severity,
lightnings from the gloom of one's own sorrows and ill-humor, were much
more frequent, but were seldom--I do not know if ever--persisted in to
the length of practical result. This is a Rhadamanthus much interested
not to be unjust, and to discriminate good from bad! Of Ziethen there
are two famous Review Anecdotes, omitted and omissible by Kaltenborn,
so well known are they: one of each kind. At a certain Review, year not
ascertainable,--long since, prior to the Seven-Years War,--the King's
humor was of the grimmest, nothing but faults all round; to Ziethen
himself, and the Ziethen Hussars, he said various hard things, and at
length this hardest: "Out of my sight with you!" [Madame de Blumenthal,
_Life of Ziethen,_ i. 265.] Upon which Ziethen--a stratum of red-hot
kindling in Ziethen too, as was easily possible--turns to his Hussars,
"Right about, RECHTS UM: march!" and on the instant did as bidden.
Disappeared, double-quick; and at the same high pace, in a high frame of
mind, rattled on to Berlin, home to his quarters, and there first drew
bridle. "Turn; for Heaven's sake, bethink you!" said more than one
friend whom he met on the road: bu