Baptiste, the little Sicilian of the train, fell foul of him the second
week of drill. The captain had several times ordered the men to be
clean-shaven when they fell in each morning. One day there was disclosed
an alarming breech of this rule, surely a case of Teutonic
connivance--during the night four men had grown hair upon their faces.
The fact that three of the four understood a minimum of English made a
practical object-lesson only the more necessary, so Captain Dunning
resolutely sent a volunteer barber back to the company street for a
razor. Whereupon for the safety of democracy a half-ounce of hair was
scraped dry from the cheeks of three Italians and one Pole.
Outside the world of the company there appeared, from time to time, the
colonel, a heavy man with snarling teeth, who circumnavigated the
battalion drill-field upon a handsome black horse. He was a West
Pointer, and, mimetically, a gentleman. He had a dowdy wife and a dowdy
mind, and spent much of his time in town taking advantage of the army's
lately exalted social position. Last of all was the general, who
traversed the roads of the camp preceded by his flag--a figure so
austere, so removed, so magnificent, as to be scarcely comprehensible.
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