What then makes a military life so little an object of desire in countries where it can be avoided is more than its dangers, more even than its loss of liberty, its irredeemable and appalling dulness. The shades in point of cheerfulness must be few and fine which distinguish a barrack from a convict prison. In none of the employments of civil life is there anything to compare with the unspeakable monotony of parades, recurring three or four times every day, varied perhaps in wet weather by the military catechism, and with the intervals of time spent in occupations of neither interest nor dignity. The length of time devoted to the mere cleaning and polishing of accoutrements is such, that the task has actually come to have the name ‘soldiering’; and the work which comes next in importance to this soldiering is the humble one of peeling potatoes for dinner. Even military greatcoats require on a moderate estimate half a hour or more every day to be properly folded, the penalty of an additional hour’s drill being the probable result of any carelessness in this highly important military function. But for the attention thus given to military dress the author of the ‘Soldier’s Pocket Book’ supplies us with a reason: ‘The better you dress a soldier, the more highly he will be thought of by women and consequently by himself.’ Still less calculated to lend attractiveness to the life of the ranks are the daily fatigue works, or extra duties which fall in turn on the men of every company, such as coal carrying, passage cleaning, gutter clearing, and other like menial works of necessity. But it is the long hours of sentry duty, popularly called ‘Sentry-go,’ which constitute the soldier’s greatest bane. Guard duty in England, recurring at short periods, lasts a whole day and night, every four hours of the twenty-four being spent in full accoutrements in the guard-room, and every intervening two hours on active sentry, thus making in all--sixteen hours in the guard-room, and eight on the sentry post. The voluntary sufferings of the saints, the tortures devised by the religious orders of olden days, or the self-inflicted hardships of sport, pale before the two hours’ sentry-go on a winter’s night. This it is that kills our soldiers more fatally than an enemy’s cannon, and is borne with more admirable patience than even the hardships of a siege. ‘After about thirty-one or thirty-two years of age,’ says Sir F. Roberts, ‘the private soldier usually ages rapidly, and becomes a veteran both in looks and habits;’[290] and this distinguished military commander points to excessive sentry duty as the cause.