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My father is powerful in this place; we shall barely have time to escape. Alvan's resolution was taken. 'Some friend a lady living in the city here name her, quick! one you can trust, he said, and fondled her hastily, much as a gentle kind of drillmaster straightens a fair pupil's shoulders. 'Yes, you have shown courage. Now it must be submission to me.
Besides the professors there was the military instructor and drillmaster, Colonel Bull, a fat little man with a great deal of self-importance, who looked after the physical side of the boys' instruction, while the professors attended to the mental side.
One biographer calls him "a master quartermaster," telling us that he knew how to feed and supply an army. Another calls Grant a great drillmaster, exhibiting him as the teacher of his own generals. Another terms Grant a natural engineer, with great gifts, but without detailed training. Another speaks of him as the greatest soldier in history in the way of attack.
He can be a very disagreeable person when he is aroused, I imagine." The boy had not the slightest apprehension of having any trouble with the drillmaster, always treating him with the respect due his position and giving no cause for any complaint on the other's part.
Steuben, the drillmaster of the Revolution, transformed the untrained and helpless troops of Washington into an effective force capable of meeting the seasoned soldiers of Cornwallis and Burgoyne. Our German ancestors were peasants, unable to write history, but they helped to make history. Without their timely aid there would not have been a United States of America.
The head-erect, chest-out, fingers-down-the-seam-of-your trousers position of the drillmaster is little better than a pose intended chiefly for ornament, and has to be abandoned the moment that any attempt at movement or action is begun. So complete is this unconscious muscular relaxation, that it is noticeable not only in the standing and sitting position, but also when lying down.
These were, indeed, dark days for Chile. During a struggle of about eight months the nation suffered more than it had done in years of warfare with Peru and Bolivia. Though the bulk of the army stood by Balmaceda, the Congress was able to raise and organize a much stronger fighting force under a Prussian drillmaster.
One of the boys' schools came en masse, dressed in military uniform, led by a band, and a drillmaster with a sword dangling at his side.
While I myself was present at the gymnasium to explain that it was nobler to drill in imitation of removing disease-breeding filth than to drill in simulation of warfare; while I distractedly readapted tales of chivalry to this modern rescuing of the endangered and distressed, the new drill went forward in some sort of fashion, but so surely as I withdrew, the drillmaster would complain that our troops would first grow self-conscious, then demoralized, and finally flatly refuse to go on.
He stiffened; he became the drillmaster again; and the tragic look in his eyes was succeeded by one of that strange exaltation I had seen in the eyes of so many Germans, which appeared to carry their mind away from you and their surroundings to the battlefield where they were fighting for their "place in the sun." "Two years, then. We shall see it through!"
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