When a man gets his company he presents the regiment with a piece of plate, or a silver inkstand, or a picture, or something which commemorates a battle or a man, and so the regimental headquarters are always telling a story of what has been in the past and inspiring fine deeds for the future. Each regiment has its peculiarity of uniform or its custom at mess, which is distinctive to it, and which means more the longer it is observed. Those in authority are trying to do away with these signs and differences in equipment, and are writing themselves down asses as they do so. You will notice, for instance, if you are up in such things, that the sergeants of the 13th Light Infantry wear their sashes from the left shoulder to the right hip, as officers do, and not from the right shoulder, as sergeants should. This means that once in a great battle every officer of the 13th was killed, and the sergeants, finding this out, and that they were now in command, changed their sashes to the other shoulder. And the officers ever after allowed them to do this, as a tribute to their brothers in command who had so conspicuously obliterated themselves and distinguished their regiment. There are other traditions, such as that no one must mention a woman's name at mess, except the title of one woman, to which they rise and drink at the end of the dinner, when the sergeant gives the signal to the band-master outside, and his men play the national anthem, while the bandmaster comes in, as Mr. Kipling describes him in "The Drums of the Fore and Aft," and "takes his glass of port-wine with the orfficers." The Sixtieth, or the Royal Rifles, for instance, wear no marks of rank at the mess, in order to express the idea that there they are all equal. This regiment had once for its name the King's American Rifles, and under that name it took Quebec and Montreal, and I had placed in front of me at mess one night a little silver statuette in the equipment of a Continental soldier, except that his coat, if it had been colored, would have been red, and not blue. He was dated 1768. In the mess-room are pictures of the regiment swarming over the heights of Quebec, storming the walls of Delhi, and running the gauntlet up the Nile as they pressed forward to save Gordon. All of this goes to make a subaltern feel things that are good for him to feel. Every day at Gibraltar there is tennis, and bands playing in the Alameda, and parades, or riding-parties across the Neutral Ground into Spain, and teas and dinners, at which the young ladies of the place dance Spanish dances, and twice a week the members of the Calpe Hunt meet in Spain, and chase foxes across the worst country that any Englishman ever rode over in pink. There are no fences, but there are ravines and canyons and precipices, down and up and over which the horses scramble and jump, and over which they will, if the rider leaves them alone, bring him safely.