The problem as to who put down the rebellion, hitherto more recondite than that of the precession of the equinoxes or of the invention of the kindergarten, and infinitely provocative of type-written rhetoric, has at last been solved! It was the boy in blue, his mother, and the girl he left behind him. Only the first had or could have the right to vote; the others had the higher right to be excused from voting. But all were in the conflict, and each furnished a demonstrable quota of heroic endeavor which crystallized into grand achievement. The first did the fighting; the second did the praying; the third supplied the inspiration. The first effort of a regiment at observance of the tactical symposium termed Dress Parade marked an era in its annals which was always thereafter recurred to with prickling sensations at the roots of the hair and a revolving propensity in the pit of the stomach. How it was ever accomplished, endured, and survived was a mystery fathomless as the craft of a Christianized and deodorized savage. The component parts of this approaching cosmorama may, with profit, be inspected separately. The enlisted recruit, only a fortnight removed from the fresh milk and feather beds of home, is already jaundice-smitten, until the white of his eye shows quite golden-roddish and sun-flowery. In his aspect we discern the wisdom of one who is seventeen years old for the first time, and duly appreciates the fact. In his liver, quinine is already wrestling with calomel for the supremacy, even as in his soul remembered moral precepts are already summoned to mount guard against the wiles of sin. He is sugared o'er with the pale cast of virtue--stern in his rectitude as the senator who has never betrayed a trust. His black eyes duly sparkle in aesthetic harmony with his curly, coaly hair, as he warbles new-fledged patriotic melodies with fervid sincerity. And he views the imminence of experience in human carnage with the blind insouciance of a political party that is being led through a slaughter-house to an open grave. If by inscrutable preordination the chevrons of a corporal or sergeant decorate his flapping sleeves, the agonies of his self-consciousness are unutterably intensified. His picturesque, variegated and altogether incomprehensible strut, is positively unique. His awkwardness spreads and sprouts and amplifies and ramifies. To witness his embarrassment is enough to break the heart of an orphan. His tendency to do the right thing at the wrong time and wrong thing at all times may be predicted with the precision of an exact science. His responsibilities are enormous; his perplexities are terrible; his woes are innumerable; he is dejected, afflicted, tormented. He is helpless as a lawyer hurling maxims of abstract justice ruthlessly in the face of evidence. He is a non-commissioned officer. That is to say: an unquoted quota; an unenumerated numeral; a non-existent existence; not an officer at all!