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IN COMMON with every other young man who enlisted to defend the glorious Stars and Stripes, Si Klegg, of the 200th Ind., had a profound superstition concerning the bayonet. All the war literature he had ever read abounded in bloodcurdling descriptions of bayonet charges and hand-to-hand conflicts, in which bayonets were repeatedly thrust up to the shanks in the combatants' bodies just as he had put a pitch-fork into a bundle of hay. He had seen pictures of English regiments bristling with bayonets like a porcupine with quills, rushing toward French regiments which looked as prickly as a chestnut-bur, and in his ignorance he supposed that was the way fighting was done. Occasionally he would have qualms at the thought of how little his system was suited to have cold steel thrust through it promiscuous-like, but he comforted himself with the supposition that he would probably get used to it in time—"soldiers get used to almost anything, you know."

The attention that the 200th Ind. had to give to the bayonet drill confirmed Si's deep respect for the weapon, and he practiced assiduously all the "lunges," "parries," and "guards" in the Manual, in the hope that proficiency so gained would save his own dearly-beloved hide from puncture, and enable him to punch any luckless rebel that he might encounter as full of holes as a fishing net.

Si couldn't think of anything to say that would do justice to his feelings; and so, with wailing and gnashing of teeth, and a few muttered words that he didn't learn in Sunday school, he got ready to take his place in the company.

"Right—Face!"

"But we don't wear no vests," said Si, taking a practical view of this new word; "nothin' but blouses, 'n' pants, 'n' shirts."

Si sprang up at the first alarm. "Git up, here, you fellers!" he shouted. "We'd better go outside and grab the ropes, or the hull shebang 'll go over."

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