But I think you may properly also consider subordinate conditions of a physical character as not unworthy of mention and not without effect in the comradeship which binds us together. We wore common uniform, and in those four years the fashions did not change. Each fellow looked like every other fellow. The resemblance went even so far as that quality of personal appearance which depends upon the use of soap and water, not always abundant in those years. We lived for the greater part in the same home, the spacious, well ventilated, scantily furnished and unroofed out-of-doors. We all had the same kind of bringing up and education in which “Right face,” “Left face,” and “As you were” were familiar precepts not to be disobeyed without reproof or punishment. We were all boys when we went into this school, some of such a tender age that we should now hesitate to place them in command of a suffragette platoon. We were all boys in the same class and at the same school. We slept in the same bed, the lap of mother earth, and dined at the same table, also usually the lap of mother earth. There was a stern and commendable impartiality also in the distribution of the fare. Luxuries were unknown, excepting when, through scarcity, necessities became a luxury, but we shared alike in abundance and want. We could say with slight paraphrase, like the three brothers in the song: We three brothers be In one good cause; Tom puffs, Bill snuffs, And I chaws. Of all these common conditions, that of the diet has impressed me most. It was called rations, I conjecture, from its irrational and unfit nature and painful uniformity. Who invented the army ration of 1861 to 1865 is, fortunately for his reputation, unknown. He was probably some distinguished commissary, and his works lived after him for many years. He should have a monument appropriately placed amongst the unknown dead built of some quality of stone most nearly approximating hardtack in quality and shape, and surmounted by a marble block carved in imitation of a hunk of rusty salt pork.