“I am free to say that the discouragements I have met with are very different, and perhaps much greater than I contemplated. Nor can I bring myself to belived tha they are necessary. I am trying to be entirely willing to peril life and limb on the field of battle, but instead of placing me where I can do this, and allowing me to concentrate all my energies upon that object, I am kept for months chafing under the petty tyrannies of a bullying officer, and deprived of most of the comforts that I have heretofore regarded as necessary to my existence. What good can be accomplished by diverting forces which should be devoted to the main struggle into this ignoble channel? That's what puzzles and irritates me.” “It seems to be one of the inseperable conditions of the higher forms of achievement that they require vastly more preparation for them than the labor of doing them.” “That's no doubt very philosophical, but it's not satisfactory, for all that.” “My dear boy, learn this grand truth now: That philosophy is never satisfactory; it is only mitigatory. It consists mainly in saying with many fine words: 'What can't be cured must be endured.'” “I presume that is so. I wish, though, that by the mere syaing so, I could make the endurance easier.” “I can make your lot in the service easier.” “Indeed! how so?” “By having you appointed my Hospital Steward. I have not secured one yet, and the man who is acting as such is so intemperate that I feel a fresh sense of escape with every day that passes without his mistaking the oxalic axid for Epsom salts, to the destruction of some earnest but constipated young patriot's whole digestive viscera. “If you accept this position,” continued the Surgeon, flinging away his refractory cigar in disgust, and rising to get a fresh one, “you will have the best rank and pay of any non-commissioned officer in the regiment; better, ineed, than that of a Second Lieutenant. You will have your quarters here with me, and be compelled to associate with no one but me, thus reducing your disagreeable companions at a single stroke, to one. And you will escape finally from all subserviency to Lieutenant Alspaugh, or indeed to any other officer in the regiment, except your humble servant. As to food, you will mess with me.” “Those are certainly very strong inducements,” said Harry, meditating upon the delightfulness of relief from the myriad of rasping little annoyances which rendered every day of camp-life an infliction. “Yes, and still farther, you will never need to go under fire, or expose yourself to danger of any kind, unless you choose to.” Harry's face crimsoned to the hue of the western sky where the sun was just going down. He started to answer hotly, but an understanding of the Surgeon's evident kindness and sincerity interposed to deter him. He knew there was no shaft of sarcasm hidden below this plain speech, and after a moment's consideration he replied: