ed to
sneak over the ice through the long building to an open door, through
which he dropped down to the ground, and then he ran. He was missed
almost instantly and the alarm given, but the companies were sent to the
lowland along the river, where there are bushes, for there seemed to be
no other place where he could possibly secrete himself.

The officer of the day is responsible, in a way, for the prisoners, so
of course Lieutenant Todd went to the ice house to find out the cause
of the trouble, and on his way back he accidentally passed an old
barrel-shaped water wagon. Not a sound was heard, but something told
him to look inside. He had to climb up on a wheel in order to get high
enough to look through the little square opening at the top, but he is
a tall man and could just see in, and peering down he saw the wretched
prisoner huddled at one end, looking more like an animal than a human
being. He ordered him to come out, and marched him to the guardhouse.

It was a strange coincidence, but the officer of the day happened to
have been promoted from the ranks, had served his three years as an
enlisted man, and then passed a stiff examination for a commission. One
could see by his walk that he had no sympathy for the mother's baby.
He knew from experience that a soldier's life is not hard unless the
soldier himself makes it so. The service and discipline develop all the
good qualities of the man, give him an assurance and manly courage he
might never possess otherwise, and best of all, he learns to respect law
and order.

The Army is not a rough place, and neither are the men starved or
abused, as many mothers seem to think. Often the company commanders
receive the most pitiful letters from mothers of enlisted men,
beseeching them to send their boys back to them, that they are being
treated like dogs, dying of starvation, and so on. As though these
company commanders did not know all about those boys and the life they
had to live.

It is such a pity that these mothers cannot be made to realize that army
discipline, regular hours, and plain army food is just what those "boys"
need to make men of them. Judging by several letters I have read, sent
to officers by mothers of soldiers, I am inclined to believe that weak
mothers in many cases are responsible for the desertion of their weak
sons. They sap all manhood from them by "coddling" as they grow up, and
send them out in the world wholly unequal to a vigorous life-