officer his dinner from the just served table. Nor were these charming
infelicities confined to his social and domestic service. Although
ready, mechanical, and invariably docile in the manual and physical
duties of a soldier,--which endeared him to the German drill-master,--he
was still invincibly ignorant as to its purport, or even the meaning
and structure of the military instruments he handled or vacantly
looked upon. It was "our Karl" who suggested to his instructors that in
field-firing it was quicker and easier to load his musket to the
muzzle at once, and get rid of its death-dealing contents at a single
discharge, than to load and fire consecutively. It was "our Karl" who
nearly killed the instructor at sentry drill by adhering to the letter
of his instructions when that instructor had forgotten the password.
It was the same Karl who, severely admonished for his recklessness, the
next time added to his challenge the precaution, "Unless you instantly
say 'Fatherland' I'll fire!" Yet his perfect good humor and childlike
curiosity were unmistakable throughout, and incited his comrades and
his superiors to show him everything in the hope of getting some
characteristic comment from him. Everything and everybody were open to
Karl and his good-humored simplicity.

That evening, as the general accompanied the consul down to the gateway
and the waiting carriage, a figure in uniform ran spontaneously before
them and shouted "Heraus!" to the sentries. But the general promptly
checked "the turning out" of the guard with a paternal shake of his
finger to the over-zealous soldier, in whom the consul recognized Karl.
"He is my Bursche now," said the general explanatorily. "My wife has
taken a fancy to him. Ach! he is very popular with these women." The
consul was still more surprised. The Frau Generalin Adlerkreutz he
knew to be a pronounced Englishwoman,--carrying out her English
ways, proprieties, and prejudices in the very heart of Schlachtstadt,