pathetic little nickel-plated aristocratic instincts, and detested his name, which was Dunlap; detested it, partly because it was nearly as common in that region as Smith, but mainly because it had a plebeian sound to his ear.  So he tried to ennoble it by writing it in this way:  d’Unlap.  That contented his eye, but left his ear unsatisfied, for people gave the new name the same old pronunciation—­emphasis on the front end of it.  He then did the bravest thing that can be imagined—­a thing to make one shiver when one remembers how the world is given to resenting shams and affectations; he began to write his name so:  d’Un Lap.  And he waited patiently through the long storm of mud that was flung at this work of art, and he had his reward at last; for he lived to see that name accepted, and the emphasis put where he wanted it, by people who had known him all his life, and to whom the tribe of Dunlaps had been as familiar as the rain and the sunshine for forty years.  So sure of victory at last is the courage that can wait.  He said he had found, by consulting some ancient French chronicles, that the name was rightly and originally written d’Un Lap; and said that if it were translated into English it would mean Peterson:  Lap, Latin or Greek, he said, for stone or rock, same as the French Pierre, that is to say, Peter; d’, of or from; un, a or one; hence d’Un Lap, of or from a stone or a Peter; that is to say, one who is the son of a stone, the son of a Peter—­Peterson.  Our militia company were not learned, and the explanation confused them; so they called him Peterson Dunlap.  He proved useful to us in his way; he named our camps for us, and he generally struck a name that was ’no slouch,’ as the boys said.

That is one sample of us.  Another was Ed Stevens, son of the town jeweller,—­trim-built, handsome, graceful, neat as a cat; bright, educated, but given over entirely to fun.  There was nothing serious in life to him.  As far as he was concerned, this military expedition of ours was simply a holiday.  I should say that about half of us looked upon it in the same way; not consciously, perhaps, but unconsciously.  We did not think; we were not capable of it.  As for myself, I was full of unreasoning joy to be done with turning out of bed at midnight and four in the morning, for a while; grateful to have a change, new scenes, new occupations, a new interest.  In my thoughts that was as far as I went; I did not go into the details; as a rule one doesn’t at twenty-five.

Another sample was Smith, the blacksmith’s apprentice.  This vast donkey had some pluck, of a slow and sluggish nature, but a soft heart; at one time he would knock a horse down for some impropriety, and at another he would get homesick and cry.  However, he had one ultimate credit to his account which some of us hadn’t:  he stuck to the war, and was killed in battle at last.

Jo Bowers, another sample, was a huge, good-natured, flax-headed lubber; lazy, sentimental, full of harmless brag, a grumbler by nature; an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar, and yet not a successful one, for he had had no intelligent training, but was allowed to come up just any way.  This life was serious enough to him, and seldom satisfactory.  But he was a good fellow, anyway, and the boys all liked him.  He was made orderly sergeant; Stevens was made corporal.