wards: "Never employ any one minus a
limb to be in authority over boys. They are apt to be irritable and
unjust."

He remained in the Military Academy four years, having been put back
six months by way of discipline, and left it without any regrets. At
this time, indeed, he had a positive distaste for the army. It was all
drill and monotony. One day was too much like another. What was the
good of it all? Why did men have to learn to kill each other anyhow?
Were we not put on earth for a higher mission?

Thus reasoned the young man, who, all his life, was subject to moods of
introspection and intense religious thought--surely strange material
out of which to build a soldier! He sensed this fact himself and was
not at all anxious to enter the army; and frequently in later life
expressed a lively dissatisfaction for the service. He was an
exemplification of the poet's line:

"I feel two natures struggling within me."

When he entered the service, as a second lieutenant of the Engineers,
at the age of nineteen, there was little to attract one in the army
life. The long peace of Europe, which had followed the defeat of
Napoleon, seemed likely to last forever. Except for a relatively small
outbreak in France, in 1848, all Europe was quiet. Consequently, the
army held little attraction to an active young man. It was all drill
and the petty details of garrison life. But underneath the placid
surface, the political pot of Europe was really boiling furiously--only
waiting a chance to bubble over. That chance soon came.

Gordon's first assignment was to Pembroke, where plans were required
for the forts at Milford Haven. Here with other engineers he worked
for a few months, when he was ordered to the Island of Corfu. This was
not altogether to his liking. He had spent a part of his boyhood there
in the Ionian Islands, but felt that they were "off the map" so far as
real activity was concerned.

Then the bubbling pot at last boiled over. Russia, impatient of
bounds, had begun her march southward, past the Black Sea, and toward
the coveted lands of Turkey. The "balance of power," that precarious
something that has always kept Europe on edge--and particularly in the
Balkans--was upset. Whether England wanted to or not, she must get
into the breach.

Thus began the Crimean War, a desperate struggle that was to bear some
glorious pages in England's history, and some dark ones as well. It
was to see the "Cha