stood farther down in the alphabet than T. But the elements of knowledge kept dropping in, at first on perfunctory calls, visitors that disappeared when you turned to speak with them, but that later came to stay.  The four young men were like children with a “roll-the-seven-number-eight-shot-into-the-middle” puzzle.  They could make a great rattling with the shot, and control their tempers; that was about all.  Later they were to form units in the most efficient and intelligent large body of men that the world ever saw, with the possible exception of the armies it was to be pitted against; but those, it must be owned, were usually smaller, though, in the ability of their commanders to form concentration, often of three times the size.  They learned that it is cheaper to let a company sleep in tents upon hard ground of a rainy night than to lodge them in a neighboring hotel at one’s own expense, and that going the rounds in pitch-darkness grows less thrilling in exact ratio to the number of times you do it, and finally, even in sight of the enemy’s lines, becomes as boring as waltzing with a girl you don’t like.  They began to learn that cleanliness is next to godliness only in times of peace, and that food is the one god, and the stomach his only prophet.  They learned that the most difficult of all duties is to keep the face straight when the horse of a brother officer who mounts for the first time is surprised to vehemence by its first experience with a brass band.

Aladdin was absolutely equal to the occasion, and developed an astonishing talent for play-acting, and, it is to be feared, strutted a little, both in the bosom of his soul and on the parade-ground.  It was only when he looked at two of the “tall men on the right,” Hamilton and Hannibal St. John, who had chosen humble parts that they might serve under their brother, that he felt properly small and resented himself.  Sometimes, too, he searched his past life and could find in it only one brave deed, his swim down the river, and he wondered with an awful wonder what he would do when the firing began.  He need not have troubled:  he was of too curious and inquiring a disposition to be afraid of most things.  And he was yet to see proved on many Southern fields that a coward is, if anything, a rarer bird than a white quail.  Only once in action did Aladdin see a man really show the white feather.  The man had gone into the army from a grocery-store, and was a very thin, small specimen with a very big, bulbous head; and, like many others of his class, proved to be a perfect fire-eater in battle, and a regular buzzard to escape fever and find food.  But during the famous seven days before Richmond a retreat was ordered of a part of the line which the Buzzard helped compose, and he was confronted by the necessity, for his friends were hastening him from behind, of crossing a gully by means of a somewhat slender fallen tree.  It was then that Aladdin saw him show fear.