the average--in a pride of white hands and a scorn of drudgery.

When Harry signed his name upon the recruiting roll--largely
impelled thereto by the delicately-flattering suggestion that he
should lead off for the youth of Sardis--he had not the slightest
misgiving that by so doing he would subject himself to any of the
ills and discomforts incidental to carrying out the enterprise upon
which they were embarking. He, like every one else, had no very
clear idea of what the company would be called upon to do or undergo;
but no doubt obtruded itself into his mind that whatever might be
disagreeable in it would fall to some one else's lot, and he continue
to have the same pleasant exemption that had been his good fortune
so far through life.

And though the company was unexpectedly ordered to the field in
the rugged mountains of Western Virginia, instead of to pleasant
quarters about Washington, there was nothing to shake this comfortable
belief. The slack discipline of the first three months' service,
and the confusion of ideas that prevailed in the beginning of the
war as to military duties and responsibilities, enabled him to
spend all the time he chose away from his company and with congenial
spirits, about headquarters, and to make of the expedition, so
far as he was concerned, a pleasant picnic. Occasionally little
shadows were thrown by the sight of corpses brought in, with
ugly-looking bullet holes in head or breast, but these were always
of the class he looked down upon, and he connected their bad luck
in some way with their condition in life. Doubtless some one had
to go where there was danger of being shot, as some one had to
dig ditches and help to pry wagons out of the mud, but there was
something rather preposterous in the thought that anything of this