The drum-major, Musician Tappit, having refused to be mustered in, and the War Department having presently refused to let us have any musicians at all, used to appear only on parades, gorgeous in his gray uniform and ornamental red stomach, disappearing with exemplary regularity, and diving into his upholsterer's cap and baize apron upon the slightest prospect of work or danger. I don't think it was ever my bad fortune to eat more unpleasant meals than those eaten at our mess table. The officers, excepting the major, but specially including the chaplain, used to insist on being helped first and excessively to everything; also on inviting their friends to dine on our plates, there being no extra ones; also on giving us the broken chairs, one in particular, that was cracked in a romp between the chaplain and the adjutant, and that pinched you when you sat on it. Then Lieutenant Harch was always playing adjutant at the dinner table, settling discussions _ex cathedra_ in a sharp tone, and ordering his companions to help him to dishes, as thus: 'Sergeant-Major, p'tatoes!' 'Oates, beef!' 'Hurry up with those beans!' To be monosyllabic, rude to his superiors and equals, and overbearing to his inferiors in rank, this fledgling soldier--our comrade of a few days since, and presently the subordinate of most of us, through standing still while we went ahead--used to think the perfection and essence of the military system. And then that smug-faced, smooth-tongued, dirty-looking chaplain, with his second-hand shirt collars and slopshop morality--was it whiskey or brandy that his breath smelt oftenest of? He was the first chaplain I had seen, and I confess his rank breath, dirty linen, and ranker and dirtier hypocrisy, gave me a disgust toward his order that it took long months and many good men to obliterate. The best part of May we spent in drilling and idling and grumbling, and some of us, not so hard worked as Sergeant-Major Jenkins, in the true military style of conviviality, usually terminating in an abrupt entry in the orderly book, opposite the name of the follower of Bacchus, 'Drunk; two extra tours guard duty;' or 'Drunk again; four extra tours knapsack drill.' Now, the knapsack drill, as practised by well-informed and duty-loving sergeants of the guard, simply consists in requiring the delinquent to shoulder, say, for two hours in every six, a knapsack filled with stones, blankets, or what not, until it weighs twenty, thirty, or perhaps forty pounds, according to the nature of the case and the officer who orders the punishment.