trick of caricature; he did not possess it himself, and so it seemed to him the most wonderful of all Hugh’s little equipment of gifts.  Mr. Britling used to carry these letters about until their edges got grimy; he would show them to any one he felt capable of appreciating their youthful freshness; he would quote them as final and conclusive evidence to establish this or that.  He did not dream how many thousands of mothers and fathers were treasuring such documents.  He thought other sons were dull young men by comparison with Hugh.

The earlier letters told much of the charms of discipline and the open air.  “All the bother about what one has to do with oneself is over,” wrote Hugh.  “One has disposed of oneself.  That has the effect of a great relief.  Instead of telling oneself that one ought to get up in the morning, a bugle tells you that....  And there’s no nonsense about it, no chance of lying and arguing about it with oneself....  I begin to see the sense of men going into monasteries and putting themselves under rules.  One is carried along in a sort of moral automobile instead of trudging the road....”

And he was also sounding new physical experiences.

“Never before,” he declared, “have I known what fatigue is.  It’s a miraculous thing.  One drops down in one’s clothes on any hard old thing and sleeps....”

And in his early letters he was greatly exercised by the elementary science of drill and discipline, and the discussion of whether these things were necessary.  He began by assuming that their importance was overrated.  He went on to discover that they constituted the very essentials of all good soldiering.  “In a crisis,” he concluded, “there is no telling what will get hold of a man, his higher instincts or his lower.  He may show courage of a very splendid sort—­or a hasty discretion.  A habit is much more trustworthy than an instinct.  So discipline sets up a habit of steady and courageous bearing.  If you keep your head you are at liberty to be splendid.  If you lose it, the habit will carry you through.”

The young man was also very profound upon the effects of the suggestion of various exercises upon the mind.

“It is surprising how bloodthirsty one feels in a bayonet charge.  We have to shout; we are encouraged to shout.  The effect is to paralyse one’s higher centres.  One ceases to question—­anything.  One becomes a ‘bayoneteer.’  As I go bounding forward I imagine fat men, succulent men ahead, and I am filled with the desire to do them in neatly.  This sort of thing—­”

A sketch of slaughter followed, with a large and valiant Hugh leaving a train of fallen behind him.

“Not like this.  This is how I used to draw it in my innocent childhood, but it is incorrect.  More than one German on the bayonet at a time is an incumbrance.  And it would be swank—­a thing we detest in the army.”

The second sketch showed the same brave hero with half a dozen of the enemy skewered like cat’s-meat.