the rain was heavy, and word was passed to wait for
the captain in our tents. For this we blessed him, seeing no fun in
standing in line in the street; and Lucy found that after all the weather
is considered in the army. When it was the turn of tent 8 we lined up
facing each other, and the captain, stooping to get his hat safely
through the door, came in between our two lines. He said "Just give me
your guns as I'm ready for them," a deceptively mild beginning, we
feared, knowing how sharp he could be. But at the fourth gun he said,
"The rifles are not so bad." I handed him mine, breech open, hoping that
it was up to the average. He tried to look down the barrel; then when he
snorted I declare I felt like a boy before his schoolmaster. But to my
relief he laughed, took from the muzzle the plug that I had put there in
expectation of a long wait in the rain, looked through the barrel, and
passed it. When he left he told us to turn out for Retreat with ponchos
only--for which again we blessed him.

As the absence of conference, on account of rain, gives me extra time, I
shall write a dissertation, not on roast pig, but just on pig, in other
words on table manners. Our company has a corner of one of the mess
shacks, into which we are marched. When first we came our method was to
stand, hats on, by our places, where our cups and plates were waiting
upside down. At the command "H Company, take seats!" (and much merriment
a sergeant once made when he commanded "Be seated!") we took off our hats
very decorously, hung them up (whether behind us on the walls or in front
of us under the tables) sat down, turned over our plates, and reached for
the dishes. Now some tables, or sections of tables, still maintain this
lofty standard of good breeding, by the sheer fact that the most of the
men are well bred and the rest are ashamed not to be. But where the
proportion is reversed degeneration is rapid. The men furtively hang up
their hats and turn over their plates before the order, and if a bunch of
them take to doing this, there appears to be no remedy for it. "It's up
to you," said a sergeant to us on the first day. "You can be gentlemen,
or you can be the other thing."

So it is after we are seated. Certain actions are natural, as determined
by the fact that while there is plenty of food, there is never on the
table at one time enough of any one thing. (A few more dishes and
platters would apparently remedy this.) Further, we haven