soldier. Some one had once said of the Ninth that there
was consolation to be found in the mortifying knowledge that the men
composing it were there with the unique view of escaping jury duty. The
consolation lay in the probability that such infernally bad soldiers
would have made jurors quite as infernally bad.

But Broadcastle, a born disciplinarian and a trained tactician, was now
in a position to echo, albeit in a different spirit, the arrogance of
Louis: "_Nous avons change tout cela!_" Ten years had sufficed to change
the indolent and incompetent Ninth of Alleghenia into a regiment
rivaling in prestige the Seventh of New York. The commissioned officers
were thrust upon, rather than achieved by, their companies, but, once
established in their respective positions, proceeded without exception
to justify, by their energy and ability, their selection from the best
element of Kenton City. Among the enlisted men the exponents of the old
spirit of sloth, indifference, and laxity were weeded out as fast as
their terms of service expired, and their places filled from the same
sources whence the company officers were drawn. Colonel Broadcastle was
a diplomat as well as a disciplinarian. By some unknowable system of
suggestion and example it came, little by little, to be regarded in
Kenton City as "the thing" to belong to the Ninth. Before the capital
was aware of the transformation, every company roster read 103, the
field and staff had been reorganized and perfected, and the Ninth
Regiment, N. G. A., was what it remained thereafter: a magnificent
fighting machine, ably drilled, perfectly equipped, a credit to the
state, to the credit of which there stood so little else. The
declaration of war with Spain brought it suddenly into prominence by the
astonishing readiness with which it went into camp twenty hours after
the Adjutant-General of Alleghenia published the President's call for
volunteers; and although it never saw active service, it attracted at
Chickamauga, and later at Tampa, the admiring attention of the regular
army, and was spoken of as the most perfect body among the volunteer
forces.

The citizens of Kenton City were not accustomed to discovering things in
which they could take pride. The exact contrary was more apt to be the
case. When, therefore, they discovered the rehabilitated Ninth, and its
redeemer in the person of its commanding officer, they had a deal to
say, and said it with unexampled arrogance a