"Have you studied the Military Catechism, Henry? that, you know, Baron Steuben requires of all the young officers."
"Most," replied Henry. "Not quite through it. I hate this getting prose by heart. Shakspeare is more to my mind than Baron Steuben. But I will tell you what I like, sister: I like the management of the horse. I can passage, and lunge, and change feet, and throw upon the haunches, with e'er a man in Amherst or Albemarle either, may be."
"You told me you had practised firing from your saddle."
"To be sure I did: and look here," replied the cadet, taking off his cap and showing a hole in the cloth. "Do you see that, Mildred? I flung the cap into the air, and put a ball through it before it fell—at a gallop."
"Well done, master; you come on bravely!"
"And another thing I have to tell you, which, perhaps, Mildred, you will laugh to hear:—I have taken to a rough way of sleeping. I want to harden myself; so, I fling a blanket on the floor and stretch out on it—and sleep like—"
"Like what, good brother; you are posed for a comparison."
"Like the sleeping beauty, sister."
"Ha! ha! that's a most incongruous and impertinent simile!"
"Well, like a Trojan, or a woodman, or a dragoon, or like Stephen Foster, and that is as far as sleeping can go. I have a notion of trying it in the woods one of these nights—if I can get Stephen to go along."