night's
work. I wrote as follows:--

C G K.... P

Before we marched I had arranged in groups the names that impressed me.
I had C without any following.

For G, I had _Gayle_, or _Gail_.

For K, _Kame, Kames, Kean, Key, Kinney, Knight_.

For P, only _Payne_.

We marched. My head was full of my list of names. I knew them without
looking at what I had written.

All at once I dropped the C. I had failed to add to the bare
initial--nothing in my thought could follow that C.

Why had I held the C so long? There must be some reason. What was its
peculiarity? The question was to be solved before I would leave it. It
did not take long. I decided that I had been attracted to it simply
because its sound was identical with K. Then K loomed up large in my
mind and took enormous precedence.

The name Payne was given up.

But another, or rather similar, question arose in regard to Payne. If K
was so prominent, why had Payne influenced me? It took me an hour to
find the reason, but I found it, for I had determined to find it. It was
simple, after all--the attraction lay in the letters a-y-n-e. At once I
added to my K's the name Kayne, although the name evoked no interest.
Thinking of this name, I saw that Kane was much easier and added it to
my list, wondering why I had not thought of it before.

The process of exclusion continued. Why Kinney? And why Knight? The
peculiarity in Kinney seemed to be the two syllables; I did not drop the
name, but tried to sound each of my others as two syllables.

"What's that you say, Jones?"

It was Butler, marching by my side, that asked the question.

I stammered some reply. I had been saying aloud, "Gay-le, Ka-me, Ka-mes,
Kay-me."

The march continued. I knew not whether we were passing through woods or
fields. My head was bent; my eyes looked on the ground, but saw it not.
My mouth was shut, but words rolled their sounds through my
ears--monotonous sounds with but one or two consonants and one or
two vowels.

Suddenly association asserted itself. I thought of Captain Haskell's
quotation from some Persian poet; what was the poet's name? I soon had
it--Khayyam--pronounced Ki-yam, I added Khayyam and Kiyam to my list. We
marched on.

Why Knight? I did not know. My work seemed to revolve about K-h. I felt
greatly encouraged with Khayyam,--pronounced Ki-yam,--which had the K
sound, and in form had the h. But was there nothing more in Knight?
Nothing except the ultimate t and the