For this principal meal of the day one hour is allowed; but that hour includes the getting ready for the afternoon parade for foot drill, in which the cavalry recruit is taught the use of the sword and all movements that he will have to perform dismounted. This lasts an hour or thereabouts, and is followed by a return to the barrack-room and another change of clothing, this time into gymnasium outfit. The recruit is then marched to the gymnasium, where, for the space of another hour, the gymnastic instructor has his turn at licking the raw material into shape. Marched back to the barrack-room once more, the recruit is free to devote what remains to him of the minutes before five o’clock to cleaning the spurs, sword, etc., which have become soiled by the morning’s riding-school work. At five “stables” sounds again; the orders for the day are read out on parade, and the men march to stables to groom, bed down, water, and feed their horses, a business to which an hour is devoted. Tea follows, and then, unless the recruit has been warned for night guard, he is free to complete the preparation of his equipment for the next day’s work, and use what little spare time is left in such relaxation as may please him. In the infantry the number of parades done during the day is about the same; there is, of course, no “stables,” but the time which the cavalryman devotes to this is taken up by musketry instruction, foot drill, and fatigues. In the artillery there is more to learn than in the cavalry, for a driver has to learn to drive the horse he rides, and lead another one as well, while the gunner has plenty to keep him busy in the mechanism of his gun, its cleaning, and the various duties connected with it. To the recruit the perpetual cleaning, polishing, burnishing, and scouring are naturally somewhat irksome; and it is not until a man has undergone the whole of his recruits’ training that he begins dimly to understand the extreme delicacy and fineness of the instruments of his trade--or profession. He comes gradually to realise that a rifle is a very delicate piece of mechanism; a spot of rust on a sword may impair the efficiency of the blade, if allowed to remain and eat in; while a big gun is a complicated piece of machinery needing as much care as a repeater watch, if it is to work efficiently, and a horse is as helpless and needs as much care as a baby. At first sight there seems no need for the eternal cleaning of buttons, polishing of spurs, and other trivial items of work which enter into the daily life of a soldier, but all these things are directed to the one end of making the man careful of trifles and thoroughly efficient in every detail of his work.