Bein' a private is no pink-silk picnic.

A mounted officer galloped into the driveway, a private soldier followed, and the private was her brother.

It was but ten years since we had first heard of this man with the curious Italian namethink of it, ten years, the time that it takes for a private to become a non-commissioned officer, or a clerk to win a fifty-pound advance in his salary.

The privates were our best friends then.

Between them and the frowsy privates was a gulf a thousand miles wide and a thousand miles deep.