tting in the window, one could trace the Reservist's progress from his
entrance at the gate to his disappearance into quarters. The square was
filled with little processions containing six or eight men each; first
from the orderly-room to the hospital, in all kinds of civilian raiment:
black, grey, brown, green, blue, drab--anything but red; hatless,
capless, black-hatted, cloth-capped, shabby, spruce, dirty, soiled,
clean, pretty clean, white-faced, red-faced, unkempt, well-groomed,
hungry, well-fed, thin, fat--every class between clerks and tramps;
every condition between prosperity and destitution. A procession was
also constantly flowing from the hospital to the quartermaster's
stores--the same procession, with one military touch; for this time the
men did not straggle, but were marched single file in charge of a
sergeant. The next procession was from the stores to the men's quarters;
but now each man had a great bundle under his arms containing his entire
kit wrapped up in an overcoat.

The quartermaster, not without pardonable pride, took me over the stores
in which the men's kits are prepared. There were hundreds of racks
containing bundles so cunningly rolled that you could see at a glance
what was in each. And beside each bundle was a valise already packed
with everything that a campaigner could need; indeed, when I read the
printed list showing what was in each my heart warmed with the same joy
that I felt when I first read _Robinson Crusoe_. Government, who is
rigorous and unyielding as a disciplinarian to her soldiers, is a mother
to them in her provision for their wants. Each bag contained a knife,
fork, spoon, tin canteen, shaving brush, soap, razor, boot brushes,
clothes brush, hair brush, pipeclay, button polisher, cleaning paste,
and a dozen other things just as interesting and as useful. Out of
curiosity I opened a housewife, and my heart was touched with the almost
feminine consideration that it indicated; for there, cunningly folded
up, were skeins of wool and cotton in many different shades, as well as
half a dozen sizes of needles. Surely the War Office is human, and not
the strange machine that some of us esteem it, for how else could it
provide that Tommy shall not have to darn his socks with scarlet, nor
his tunic with grey, nor his trousers with white wool? As the men came
into the stores each one received his share of these excellent things,
and the quartermaster's sergeants displayed quite a g