cadets from entering a drinking or gambling saloon or any other
disreputable place under penalty of expulsion, publication of the
offender's name in the city papers, and forfeiture of uniform. He
insisted on prompt obedience and unremitting drill. The company under
his firm and inspiring command rapidly pulled itself together,
and attracted all at once the notice and admiration of Chicago and
northern Illinois. The young captain did not give up his law studies.
He wrote and affixed to his desk a card which contained his own daily
orders: "So aim to spend your time that at night, when looking back at
the disposal of the day, you find no time misspent, no hour, no moment
even, which has not resulted in some benefit, no action which had not
a purpose in it. Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays: Rise at 5 o'clock;
5 to 10, study; 10 to 1, copy; 1 to 4, business; 4 to 7, study; 7 to
8, exercise; 8 to 10, study. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays: Rise
at 6; 6 to 10, study; 10 to 1, business; 1 to 7, study and copy; 7 to
11, drill."

Working faithfully as he did in the office, his whole heart was in his
drill room. His fame as a fencer went abroad in the town, and he was
challenged to a bout by the principal teacher of the art in Chicago.
Ellsworth records the combat in his diary of May 24th: "This evening
the fencer of whom I have heard so much came up to the armory to fence
with me. He said to his pupils and several others that if I held to
the low guard he would disarm me every time I raised my foil. He is
a great gymnast, and I fully expected to be beaten. The result was: I
disarmed him four times, hit him thirty times. He disarmed me once
and hit me five times. At the _touche-à-touche_ I touched him in two
places at the same allonge, and threw his foil from him several feet.
He was very angry, though he tried to conceal it."