me with a delighted smile as I ate it. He behaved
extremely well in both fights, and after the second one I had him
formally before me and remitted his sentence--something which of course
I had not the slightest power to do, although at the time it seemed
natural and proper to me.

When we came to be mustered out, the regular officer who was doing the
mustering, after all the men had been discharged, finally asked me where
the prisoner was. I said, "What prisoner?" He said, "The prisoner,
the man who was sentenced to a year's imprisonment with hard labor
and dishonorable discharge." I said, "Oh! I pardoned him"; to which he
responded, "I beg your pardon; you did what?" This made me grasp the
fact that I had exceeded authority, and I could only answer, "Well, I
did pardon him, anyhow, and he has gone with the rest"; whereupon the
mustering-out officer sank back in his chair and remarked, "He was
sentenced by a court martial, and the sentence was approved by the
major-general commanding the division. You were a lieutenant-colonel,
and you pardoned him. Well, it was nervy, that's all I'll say."

The simple fact was that under the circumstances it was necessary for me
to enforce discipline and control the regiment, and therefore to reward
and punish individuals in whatever way the exigencies demanded. I often
explained to the men what the reasons for an order were, the first time
it was issued, if there was any trouble on their part in understanding
what they were required to do. They were very intelligent and very eager
to do their duty, and I hardly ever had any difficulty the second time
with them. If, however, there was the slightest willful shirking of duty
or insubordination, I punished instantly and mercilessly, and the whole
regiment cordially backed me up. To have punished men for faults and
shortcomings which they had no opportunity to know were such would have
been as unwise as to have permitted any of the occasional bad characters
to exercise the slightest license. It was a regiment which was sensitive
about its dignity and was very keenly alive to justice and to courtesy,
but which cordially approved absence of mollycoddling, insistence upon
the performance of duty, and summary punishment of wrong-doing.

In the final fighting at San Juan, when we captured one of the trenches,
Jack Greenway had seized a Spaniard, and shortly afterwards I found Jack
leading his captive round with a string. I told him to turn hi