We also tactfully let it be known that the colonel was anxious to learn whether our officers were perfectly satisfactory. With more tractable and appreciative inquirers we entered into more detail. He had asked the corporal whether he had ever shot a rifle: corporal blushingly admitted that he had once shot a squirrel. (Corporal is a football hero, and accustomed to meet the enemy at much closer quarters than rifle range. The rest of us, on the other hand, are publicists, and are deadliest at distances of from 500 to 5000 miles.) Number 2 was asked if he could cook, and claimed that he could. Colonel in his haste did not think to ask Number 2 if any one could eat what he cooked, or he would have learned that Number 2's cookery is best suited to prisoners of war.

Colonel had no sooner departed on his inquisitorial way than the student major reappeared from nowhere, in a fearful rage, to inquire if we couldn't stand still even for two minutes, and to complain bitterly that during the inspection one man had been guilty of rubbing his nose. Murmurs of disapproval ran through the ranks at the mention of this wretched offender, who was probably responsible for dragging our company down to a tie with the Law School for third place out of nine in the honors of the day.

Captain now mercifully ordered, 'Rest,' and a prodigious and concerted sigh rose from the ranks. Each man abandoned his pokerlike pose of 'Ten-shun' for an attitude of infinite dejection and fatigue. It was 6:15 and I remarked to Number 2 that my back ached. He said his ached clear through. Our former corporal asked the captain what a man was to do if he had a dinner engagement. Captain said he had one, but guessed we'd all have to wait for orders to dismiss. Corporal replied that he hadn't one, but just wanted to know. If one is to rise in the service, one should never lose an opportunity of extracting military information from one's officers.

We have not yet been promoted to uniforms, but last night after drill we were informed that while we could not be provided with the invisible olive-gray now in fashion, some antiquated khaki-colored uniforms of 1910 were being provided for our adornment. This arrangement met with no objection. The fact is, we are not wholly unaccustomed to wearing clothes of the fashion of 1910, and furthermore, while we have no desire to be conspicuous, some of us rather shrink from the idea of wearing invisible clothing, no matter how fashionable.

So full of adventure is military life, even in its most elementary form. But after all I am not primarily a soldier: I am a human coral insect—that is to say, a university professor, before whom life stretches, as Stevenson said of another class, 'long and straight and dusty to the grave.' I should like to be a volcanic being, shouldering up whole islands at a heave; or even, if that could not be, perhaps engulfing one or two, reluctantly of course, now and then. Whereas it is my lot in life to labor long and obscurely beneath the surface, to make the intellectual or historical structure of the universe solider by some infinitesimal increment, about which in itself nobody except my wife and me particularly cares.

Sometimes, however, I repine a little and wish that I were, say, a porpoise, splashing gayly along at the surface, and making a noise in the world. Once in a while, when I am going to sleep (for even a coral insect must sometimes sleep), dreams float through my mind of sudden achievement, such as might make one a porpoise or better; and once one of these nearly came true. Judge how nearly. I was wandering through a half-subterranean Spanish chapel, fitly set with huge old missals, dark altar-pieces, covered stalls, and quaint curios. Its dim recesses beckoned us on from one rich relic to another. Interest quickened. It seemed a place where anything might be, awaiting only the expert eye of discovery. I had often fancied such a place, and finding in some dim corner of it a certain long-lost work of literature still remembered after a thousand years' absence; somewhere in such a sleepy treasure-house it doubtless lay, enfolding within its mouldering folios, not its quaint contents only, but fame and fortune for its finder. And look! Yonder, under a corner staircase, is a shelf of old books, large and small. You approach it with feigned indifference; here, if anywhere, will be your prize, a manuscript whose unique rarity will awaken two hemispheres. It is not among the ponderous tomes, of course; so you take them down first, postponing putting fortune to the decisive touch. But these small octavos have just the look of promise; they are thin, too, as it would be; and what period more likely for it than that sixteenth century to which they so obviously belong?

Only the other day, a friend of mine who lives on our reef, and on a branch even more recondite than mine, found among the uncatalogued antiques of an American museum the one long-lost Tel-el-Amarna tablet, which had disappeared almost as soon as it was discovered, and of which it was only known that it was probably in America. Thus may one be changed in a moment from polyp to porpoise, and be translated from the misty obscurity of the bottom to the stirring, dazzling, delightful surface of things.

But after all, the plain truth is that adventure consists less in the experiences one actually has than in the indefatigable expectancy with which one awaits them. Indeed, I sometimes fear that people must be divided into those who have adventures and those who appreciate them. And between the two the affinity for adventure is greater treasure than the experiencing of it. If we are possessed of the affinity, adventure itself is, at most, just round the corner from us. This opens the life of adventure to all who crave it. What possibilities lie in merely crossing a street, for example! Some one remarked the other day as he dodged across among the motor-cars, 'Why not take a chance now and then and lead a real life for a few minutes?'

I therefore recommend the life of adventure. It conceives each day as a fresh enterprise, full of delightful possibilities and promise, and so preserves the wine of life from growing flat.

Here is the secret of youth. The moral of Mr. Disraeli's epigram is, 'Be adventurous.'