s a wooden nutmeg.

The commanding officer rolled an intimate eye at his wife.

The lady was sitting big with rage, but her words were cordial still:
"Indeed, Mr. Albumblatt, the way officers who have influence in
Washington shirk duty here and get details East is something I
can't laugh about. At one time the Captain was his own adjutant and
quartermaster. There are more officers at this table to-night than
I've seen in three years. So we are doubly glad to welcome you at Fort
Brown."

"I am fortunate to be on duty where my services are so required, though
I could object to calling it Fort Brown." And Augustus exhaled a new
smile.

"Prefer Smith?" said Captain Starr.

"You misunderstand me. When we say Fort Brown. Fort Russell, Fort Et
Cetera, we are inexact. They are not fortified."

"Cantonment Et Cetera would be a trifle lengthy, wouldn't it?" put in
the Doctor, his endurance on the wane.

"Perhaps; but technically descriptive of our Western posts. The Germans
criticise these military laxities."

Captain Duane now ceased talking, but urbanely listened; and from time
to time his eye would scan Augustus, and then a certain sublimated
laugh, to his wife well known; would seize him for a single voiceless
spasm, and pass. The experienced Albumblatt meanwhile continued,
"By-the-way, Doctor, you know the Charite, of course?"

Doctor Guild had visited that great hospital, but being now a goaded man
he stuck his nose in his plate, and said, unwisely: "Sharrity? What's
that?" For then Augustus told him what and where it was, and that
Krankenhaus is German for hospital, and that he had been deeply
impressed with the modernity of the ventilation. "Thirty-five cubic
metres to a bed in new wards," he stated. "How many do you allow,
Doctor?"

"None," answered the surgeon.

"Do I understand none, Doctor?"

"You do, sir. My patients breathe in cubic feet, and swallow their doses
in grains, and have their inflation measured in inches."

"Now there again!" exclaimed Augustus, cheerily. "More antiquity to be
swept away! And people say we young officers have no work cut out for
us!"

"Patients don't die then under the metric system?" said the Doctor.

"No wonder Europe's overcrowded," said Starr.

But the student's mind inhabited heights above such trifling. "Death,"
he said, "occurs in ratios not differentiated from our statistics." And
he told them much more while they booked at him over their plates. He
managed