who have the means to purchase an immunity can obtain one for only two
years. One year they must serve, parade, drill, march, and mount guard,
though they are not required to live in the barracks. Occasional cases
of hardship or injustice occur. We know of a poor, but promising
pianist whose studies were cut short and his fingers stiffened by the
three-years' service. Leaving out of view exceptional facts, the system
works well. All the youth of the country acquire health, strength, an
upright carriage, and habits of punctuality and cleanliness. The clumsy
rustic is soon licked into shape, and leaves his barrack, to return to
the fields, a soldier and a more self-reliant man. Prussia, too, secures
the services of an army, in time of need, commensurate in numbers with
the adult male population.

The French conscript, if he draws the unlucky number, can buy a
substitute. All are not enrolled as recruits; and all those so enrolled
are not obliged to serve. The only sons of widows, and some other
persons, are always exempt. Once in "the line," however, the young man
is engaged for five or seven years, and receives a training in matters
gymnastic and military which turns out the best soldiers in Europe.

Little would one imagine, as he passes the groups of dainty and
scrupulously neat French officers upon the _boulevards_, looking the
laziest persons in the world, that these seeming carpet-knights are out
upon the _Champ de Mars_ at three o'clock in the morning, and
often drill until nine or ten in the forenoon,--or that the little
_toulourou_, as he is nicknamed, or private of the _ligne_, in his
brick-colored trowsers and clean gaiters, whose voice is the gayest and
whose legs are the nimblest in the barrier-ball, has done a day's work
of parade and gymnastics which equals the toil of an _ouvrier_. Running,
swimming, climbing, and fencing with the bayonet, are often but the