As for regular instruction in tactics, there was perhaps as much as the nature of the case admitted, to wit, none at all. Every now and then a fine system would be organized, and promulgated in general orders. Sometimes a series of recitations were prescribed that would have dismayed a teachers' institute. Field officers were to say their lessons every evening at headquarters, and head classes from their own line in the forenoon. The company officers in turn were to teach non-commissioned ideas how to shoot. Playing truant was strictly forbidden; careless officers who should 'fail to acquire the lesson set for them' were to be reported, and, I presume, the unlucky man who missed a question would have seen 'the next' go above him till the bright boy of each class had worked his way up to the head. These systems did _not_ prove a failure: they simply never went at all, but were quietly and unanimously ignored by teacher and teachee. Every man was left to thumb his Hardee in private, and find out what he lacked by his daily blunders on drill. These furnished ample subject for private study, as well as for animated discussion among the other military topics that occupied our leisure. Emulation and the fear of ridicule kept even the most indolent at work. It was amusing to see how rapidly the _esprit de corps_--their own favorite word, which they took infinite pleasure in repeating on all occasions--grew upon our newly made warriors. How learned they were upon all the details of 'the service,' and how particularly jealous of the honors and importance of their own particular 'arm!' I used to listen with infinite relish to the discussion in our colonel's quarters, which happened to be a favorite rendezvous for the field officers of some half dozen different regiments, during the idle hours of the long winter evenings. No matter how the conversation commenced, it was sure to come down to this at last, and cavalry, infantry, and artillery blazed away at each other in a voluble discussion that was like Midshipman Easy's triangular duel multiplied by six. 'There's no use talking, colonel, you never have done anything against us in a fair hand-to-hand fight, and you never can.' (_You_ on this occasion may be supposed to be cavalry, personified in a long, lantern-jawed attorney from Iowa, while _us_ stands for infantry, represented by an ex-drover from Indiana.) 'Never done anything, eh?' replies the attorney, who, on the strength of a commission and mustache of at least six months' date, ranks as quite a veteran in the party; 'what did you do at Borodino? Pretty show you made there when we came charging down upon you!' 'Oh, that was all somebody's fault--what's his name's, you know, that commanded there. Didn't find those charges work so well at Waterloo, did you?' Thus the ex-drover, fresh from the perusal of Halleck on Military Science.