t we club together for a bucket for
our washing. Clay offered to get this without cost, but late in the
afternoon reported failure. "I couldn't get one, though I looked in every
tent in the other companies." Then he missed our new bench. "Where has it
gone?" he demanded. Corder answered dryly, "Back to its original owners,
I suppose." But the lantern works better tonight, as the fellows all
remark, avoiding mention of the fact that it has a somewhat different
shape.

This morning we had our first drill in calisthenics. We were spaced in
very open order, advised to take off our shirts, and Captain Wheeler, a
magnificent figure of a man, strong as an oak in spite of his gray hair,
stood on a platform and put us through exercises that searched out, so
the boys agreed, muscles that you didn't know you had. You get a new idea
of the "position of a soldier" after he has shown it to you. "Oh, no, no,
no!" he cried when first we came to attention at his command, his voice
rolling away over the lake into infinite distance. And then he made us
try to show that we were proud of our uniforms.

This afternoon's platoon drill, under our lieutenant, made me very sure
that, though I already feel as if I had been here for weeks, I am not yet
master of my work. The drill kept me thinking. As it is no pleasure to be
publicly called down, I am all the while trying to make no mistakes. A
fellow must instantly--instantly!--know the difference between "Platoon
right," for instance, and "Right by squads," even though the commands may
not have been given for an hour. And one must know it whether corporal or
not, for half the time the corporals do not yet know it themselves, and
either mumble their commands or are silent, so that they are no help. And
even if a fellow knows what to do, but lags in the doing of it, then he
is likely to put the whole line out. Further, freight trains rumble by at
the bottom of the drill field, the wind whistles in your ears, other
officers near at hand are shouting commands to other platoons, and so you
are likely not to hear a command at all. But on the whole I think I am
improving.

The short time that we had with the captain was enough to prove that he
is, as Clay claimed, a Southerner, if only from his use of the word
_like_. As we came down from the right shoulder, he said, "Don't climb
your rifle lahk it was a rope." And at Present Arms, "That man is holding
up his piece lahk it was a Christmas tree." "Swi