tant
wound, by one of the doctors. And after my experience I can declare that
all doctors are divided into three kinds.

One was a volunteer, one of our own company, by the way, whose feet
having given out was transferred to the medical corps, and keeps an
especially kindly eye on all H company men. But he being busy, I fell
into the hands of the regulars, and had a chance to judge of the opinion
common among the rookies--"they treat you like a horse." Now regular
officers must be short and sharp with their men, and the doctors among
them are taught to be suspicious by the sojering they necessarily detect.
It must be a struggle to keep sweet the milk of human kindness.

The man who dressed my foot had succeeded in remembering that the
majority of men were neither cowards nor dishonest. He was considerate of
me and of the orderlies under him. But alongside was a scowl. A poor fat
bandsman with a lame foot was not excused from marching the next day. The
orderly who had mislaid the iodine was scalped. The orderly who had
charge of the medicine chest was also scalped. The man whose foot this
doctor was dressing was so certainly a man of character and a person of
civilian consequence that he was not scalped for presuming to turn his
ankle; but I felt the certainty that under actual campaign conditions he
would have fared no better than the others. It was borne in upon me that
a gentleman who is gentlemanly only to gentlemen is not a gentleman at
all.

Though I have not spoken much of them, we have our daily conferences
whenever the weather will permit. Today we first had battalion
conference, when Major Goring spoke of recent manoeuvres--and we men were
interested to see that even he spoke of Friday as an extremely successful
day, and Saturday as an unusually hard one. Then supper, then bed-making
(which is desirable before the light goes--by the way, I am writing no
longer in the afternoon but the evening) then regimental conference, when
Major Downes spoke against time for an hour (and mighty well, upon the
Philippines and army experiences there) in the hope that General Wood
would come, which he didn't. Now I am writing while sitting upon a firkin
of apples that I had sent from our neighbor Williams, waiting for the
squad to come and help me eat them. Very bad writing this, I know, by the
light of the fire, holding the paper first folded, then bent, then
skewed, anything to stiffen it and catch the light, while every mo