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144 How well I remember the first grief of my military life, a blow that befell me a few days after I had entered college all aglow with the poetry of war. It was the morning on which caps were distributed. Each new recruit of the company found one that fitted him, but all were too small for me, and the captain turned upon me furiously.

"Are you aware that the commissary stores will have to be reopened just for you?" And I heard him mutter after a pause, "What are you going to do with a head like that?"

Great God, what I underwent at that moment! What—be a soldier? I thought. Never! Better beg my bread in the streets—better die and have done with it!

Then I remember an officer, an old soldier, gruff but kindly, who had a way of smiling whenever he looked at me. How that smile used to exasperate me! I had made up my mind to demand an explanation, to let him know that I didn't propose to be any man's butt, when one evening he called me to him, and having given me to understand that he had heard something about me and that he wanted to know if it were really true (I was to speak frankly, for it would do me no harm), he finally, with many coughs and smiles and furtive glances, whispered in my ear: "Is it true that you write poetry?"

I recall, too, the insuperable difficulty of