spicion that not much time
was wasted inside the barracks in fine talking.

Moreover, the General used to have guilty soldiers tied up and well
whipped without first stopping to inquire who their fathers might be.
With him punishment was meted out with no regard for persons. It was the
uniform, not the man who happened to be inside it, that he regarded.
When his soldiers were drawn up in line he was quite blind to the fact
that this man perhaps was the son of his old crony, or that man was the
son of a county magistrate--sergeants, corporals, ensigns, and privates,
these were the only distinctions he ever made. And if anybody tried to
distinguish himself by appearing on parade in a dirty jacket, he had it
well dusted for him there and then in a way the individual concerned was
not likely to forget in a hurry.

Nor did the General ever allow anybody, no matter whom, to be exempted
from service. The dear little gentlemen-cadets had to pace up and down
when on guard, with seven-pound muskets across their shoulders, just
like anybody else, though the hearts of their distinguished mammas
almost broke at the sight, when they drove over in their fine coaches
to see their darlings. Malingerers, again, had a fearful time of it with
him. Such young gentlemen never wanted to go to the hospital more than
once. Their distinguished mammas would scurry off to the General full of
despair, and explain to him with tears in their eyes that this or that
young exquisite lay mortally sick in the hospital, would he allow them
to take their poor darlings home, or at least let them come to the
hospital to nurse the invalids there, or send them nice tempting dishes
from home, or tell the family doctor to call? No, nothing of the sort.
The General used to receive them buttoned up to the chin, and nothing on
earth could move him. The proper place for the fellow was the
barrack-hospital, he would say, there he would receive proper treatment
like any other of His Majesty's soldiers; the regimental surgeons had
quite sufficient science to cure him. And it regularly happened that
after a four or five days' course of a platter of coarse barley pottage,
and half an ounce of plain black commissariat bread, the young gentleman
was so completely cured of every bodily ailment that he had never the
faintest wish ever afterwards to divert himself in the hospital, but
preferred instead to attend to his daily duties.

Nor could his officers boast that he show