officer on a snow-white horse. His saddle blanket is scarlet. What a
fool! No one who has ever been in action but remembers how naturally
every rifle turns toward the man on a white horse; no one but has
observed how a bit of red enrages the bull of battle. That such colors
are fashionable in military life must be accepted as the most
astonishing of all the phenomena of human vanity. They would seem to
have been devised to increase the death-rate.

This young officer is in full uniform, as if on parade. He is all agleam
with bullion--a blue-and-gold edition of the Poetry of War. A wave of
derisive laughter runs abreast of him all along the line. But how
handsome he is!--with what careless grace he sits his horse!

He reins up within a respectful distance of the corps commander and
salutes. The old soldier nods familiarly; he evidently knows him. A
brief colloquy between them is going on; the young man seems to be
preferring some request which the elder one is indisposed to grant. Let
us ride a little nearer. Ah! too late--it is ended. The young officer
salutes again, wheels his horse, and rides straight toward the crest of
the hill!

A thin line of skirmishers, the men deployed at six paces or so apart,
now pushes from the wood into the open. The commander speaks to his
bugler, who claps his instrument to his lips. _Tra-la-la! Tra-la-la!_
The skirmishers halt in their tracks.

Meantime the young horseman has advanced a hundred yards. He is riding
at a walk, straight up the long slope, with never a turn of the head.
How glorious! Gods! what would we not give to be in his place--with his
soul! He does not draw his sabre; his right hand hangs easily at his