And--it scares me.
"But I'm trying to figure out that, first, I am safer if I do what my superiors tell me to do; second, that it's a dog's life anyway; third, that it's good enough for me, so why run away from it?
"Some day some of these Johnnies will scare me so that I'll start after them.

There's no fury like a man thoroughly frightened.
"Nobody has yet been hurt in any of the lancer regiments except one of Rush's men, who got tangled up in the woods and wounded himself with his own lance.
"Oh, these lances! And oh, the cavalry! And, alas! a general who doesn't know how to use his cavalry.
"No sooner does a cavalry regiment arrive than, bang! it's split up into troops--a troop to escort General A., another to gallop after General B., another to sit around headquarters while General C.
dozes after dinner! And, if it's not split up, it's detailed bodily on some fool's job instead of being packed off under a line officer to find out what is happening just beyond the end of the commander's nose.
"The visitors like to see us drill--like to see us charge, red pennons flying, lances at rest.

I like to see Rush's Lancers, too.
But, all the same, sometimes when we go riding gaily down the road, some of those dingy, sunburnt Western regiments who have been too busy fighting to black their shoes line up along the road and repeat, monotonously: "'Who-ever-saw-a-dead-cavalryman ?' "It isn't what they say, Ailsa, it's the expression of their dirty faces that turns me red, sometimes, and sometimes incites me to wild mirth.
"I'm writing this squatted under my 'tente d'abri.' General McClellan, with a preposterous staff the size of a small brigade, has just passed at a terrific gallop--a handsome, mild-eyed man who has made us into an army, and who ornaments headquarters with an entire squadron of Claymore's 20th Dragoons and one of our own 8th Lancers.

Well, some day he'll come to me and say: 'Ormond, I understand that there is only one man in the entire army fit to command it.

Accept this cocked hat.' "That detail would suit me, dear.