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21.

nervous, but went through the guard mount very well.  Colonel Slocum came down the line, snatched my rifle in the conventional way, looked at it and shoved it back into my hands.  He then looked me over with the expression of restrained indignation which inspecting officers wear as a part of the ritual.  I stood stiffly at attention, looking through the colonel and into space, thinking of the exemplary Lieutenant Bernentech in "Rupert of Hentzau." Sands complimented us when it was over, and called us "the Grenadiers."  Thereafter, when he wished to give distinction to some cadet, he made the fortunate man a Grenadier.  It was not serious of course, but we all felt that Sands actually looked on us as a superior group, and that our commissions were virtually assured. 

All through the summer I stayed pretty closely to the camp.  The cadets received maintenance and $100 a month, which was more money than I ever had earned.  But I owed $300 to Jule Fisher, at the Smith County Bank, and wanted to save money.  I went to the city occasionally on week-ends, though I do not recall what I did there for amusement. I bought a Kodak, for which I paid $15.00, as a birthday present for Helen Fisher.  (In the autumn of the same year I bought an exactly similar Eastman Kodak in Saumur, France, for $13.00 (65 francs.  This tended to make me skeptical about protective tariffs).  I ordered a uniform from a tailor in Chattanooga, and paid a deposit on it; but the tailors were swamped with orders and I never got the uniform.  I made one week-end trip to Nashville, to see Helen