Gunner Jingo's jubilee

Preface

*' We do not want to fight, but, by Jingo ! if we do, We have the men, we have the guns, and have the money too."

Music Hall Ballad.

" A thousand curses never tore a shirt."

Eastern Proverb.

And yet the modern modification of the Pagan oath, " By Jove," has been all-powerful in the mouths of word-coiners of political cries to kill with ridicule what cannot be overthrown by argument — a duty called Patriotism.

Sir Henry Havelock-AUan in a speech on the death of Lord Beaconsfield, said — " It must be allowed that he possessed one virtue — Patriotism— but that was a Pagan virtue."

If Patriotism be Paganism, then there be many English folk content to be writ, " Pagan." Among them we must not venture to include the Postmaster-General, judging by the following from The Times of November 21st, 1892.

'* The Drilling of Post-Office Messengers. — A deputation from the Council of the International Arbitration League waited upon the Postmaster-General at St. Martin's-le-Grand on Friday evening to protest against the military training of the telegraph boys in the postal service. Mr. W. R. Cremer, M.P., Secretary to the League, introduced the deputation, which, he explained, was composed of members of organised bodies of workers, who were there to endeavour to stay a movement they looked upon with great disfavour. Mr. Howard Evans, chairman of the Council, said the League had done not a little in the past to counteract the Jingo spirit — the war spirit of this country. The deputation were there to protest against the telegraph messengers being compelled to go into the army just as they attained the age of manhood, which was, in fact, a system of indirect conscription. Several others having spoken, the Postmaster-General in reply said the case of the deputation had been fairly and reasonably placed

5 < 2992

VUl PREFACE.

before him. He was in thorough sympathy with the League, and it was their duty, as representatives of the League, and as Trade Unionists, to criticise the action of any pubHc department which tended to increase the mihtary spirit of the country."

It is needless to remark that drilHng telegraph boys has no more to do with compulsory service than the Salvation Army's big drum, or the red smocks of the Shoeblack Brigade.

The Peace Association would also forbid the use of the national flag, ignoring the last advice given by the Prince of Peace to his followers — " Let him that hath no sword sell his garment and buy one."

UNION JACKS.

The International Arbitration and Peace Association wrote that the Committee of the Association had adopted a resolution as follows —

" That, with reference to the letter of the Earl of Meath to the chairman of the London School Board offering to give £^o towards the provision of ' Union Jacks ' to be displayed in Board Schools, this committee trust that, should the offer be accepted, no use will be made of the flags tending to foster among the children a spirit of militarism, or of contempt for or disparagement of other nations."

The letter was referred to the School Management Committee.

The Gas Workers' and General Labourers' Union (South Woolwich Branch) forwarded the following resolution : —

*' That this meeting strongly condemns the undemocratic spirit of such members of the London School Board as are favourable to the introduction of Union Jacks, together with some ritual in keeping with that semi-barbaric worship of national fetishes known as Jingoism, into our Board Schools. And we think the members of the London School Board could be better congratulated upon a fitness for their high office were they rather eager in the suppression of such tales of the triumphs of the British flag as have made the name of Englishmen a pretty general byword for rapacity, tyranny, and oppression throughout the world, and, instead, endeavour to sink the vaunt of racial superiority and encourage in the young mind the nobler ideals of a reign of universal brotherhood and peace. Furthermore, we think any educational m.ovement which may possibly bias children poUtically unfair to their parents, who are of many varied shades of political opinion, some thinking British traditions of the past rather

PREFACE. IX

remarkable for impudence than dignity, and British rule (in India, for example, where salt is taxed 400 per cent, to keep the younger sons of our aristocracy in snug billets) the most intolerable burden the world has ever had to bear."

These people know that the Civil Service in India is filled by open competition. But they know also that pohtical triumph is apt to follow the banners of those who lie longest and strongest. Like Count Tolstoi, they look only upon the inscriptions on one side of the coins set in circulation by the teaching of Christ. The Count follows this view to its logical conclusion in " The Kreutzer Sonata," in which he submits a plan for the extinction of the human race. It will commend itself to those who are neither men nor women. When the earth is peopled by such, love and war will cease. Meanwhile in every tongue and nation Jingoes will abound from General Joshua to Private John Ploughman.

" And Caleb said. He that smiteth Kirjath-sepher, and taketh it, to him will I give Achsah my daughter to wife." — Josh. XV., 16.

Emile Zola has put into the mouth of a despairing French soldier the following opinion : " Mais, repris par sa science, Maurice songeait a la guerre necessaire, la guerre qui est la vie m^me, la loi du monde. N'est-ce pas I'homme pitoyable qui a introduit I'idee de justice et de paix, lorsque I'impassable nature n'est qu'un continuel champ de massacre ? . . . . ' S'entendre ! ' s'ecria-t-il. ' Oui, dans des siecles.' Si tous les peuples ne formaient plus qu'un peuple, on pourrait concevoir a la rigeur I'avenement de cet age d'or ; et encore la fin de la guerre ne serait-elle pas la fin de I'humanit^ ? . . . . J'etais imbecile tout a I'heure, il faut se battre, puisque c'est la loi."

The survival will be of the fittest.

Englishmen shrink from the acknowledgment of Patriotism, perhaps because they feel the boastful ballad of the music-hall is not true in its first postulate — men. In a country where universal liability to military service is not the law of the land, expressions of patriotism seem out of place, too much Hke Artemus Ward dedicating his wife's relations to the maintenance of the American Union. We rely mainly upon the conscripts of hunger officered by the sans-souciant sons of affluence.

" But Romans, in Rome's quarrel, spared neither land nor gold.

Nor limb nor hfe, nor child nor wife, in the brave days of old."

X PREFACE.

It is not thought that the biography of the special type of Jingo here selected has much of interest, apart from the fact that half-a-century of life, mostly over sea, has forced a wider horizon upon his physical and mental vision than falls to the lot of home-keeping Englishmen. Allowance must also be made for the taint of military heredity and the contact with many men of many creeds.

If lessons are to be learned from events the truth must be told. '^ Naught has been set down in malice." The Canadian Campaign tells itself in telegrams and letters.

Without permission I have used the names of some old comrades and others. I have also quoted from Articles I had written in the United Service Magazine. The two illustrations initialed "LA." involving mysteries of millinery, have been kindly supplied by a lady friend, and I have been helped in the re-production of others. My friend, Comte de Borde, formerly of the French navy generously copied my originals by photography, and they were finally engraved by Messrs. Dellagana and Co. But my thanks are above all due to my friend "Meg Dyan " for her valuable help and unflagging interest in the work, without which Gunner Jingo would probably never have seen the light.

T. Bland Strange.

Part I. Page

Chapter I. — Soldier Jhat — Petticoat Influence — " Enfant de Troupe " — Waterloo — Piety and Profanity — Tales of My Grandmother — A Royal Spree — A Burst with the Hounds — " Pallida Mors" — School Days and Holidays — Irish Highlanders — A Non-Competition Wallah ... i

Chapter II. — College Life — " Mos pro Lege " — The Minstrel Boy — Charles Gordon — Adam Lindsay Gordon — Promotion — A Military Arnold — A Snooker Aristocrat — A Quiet Pipe — Astronomical — Sky Signs 22

Chapter 1 1 1. ^Gibraltar — Gib-al-Taric — Saracenic Conquest— A Queen's Chemise — Rien de sacre pour un Sappeur — The Union Jack — A Capture — Spanish Honour — Scrambling ... ... ... 35

Chapter IV. — A Vision — A Brain Wave 45

Chapter V. — The Calpe Hunt — Africa — Shooting and

Chapter VI. — Andalucia — Red Hot Shot — An Ass who Lost his Head — A Ride in Andalucia — The Insular Englishman — '* Zingari " — Pepita — Cadiz — ** El TigreReal " 52

Xll CONTENTS.

PAGE^

Chapter VII. — Bull Fighting, Professional and Amateur — A Matador's Salute — A Knowing Bull — Demos — A White Hat — Picadors and Horses — Chulos and Bandarilleros — The Melee — A Wild Waltz — The Slain — Cosas de Espana — An Amateur Bull Fight — Turkey Plucking — Wicked Women — A Crowned Monarch of the Street — A Flea- Bitten Grey 62

Chapter VIII. — Gib Once More — Moorish Haiks and Highland Kilts— The Carnival— " Rule Britannia" — '! Plus Royaliste que le Roi " — The Crimea ... 70

Chapter IX. — Home Again — Disappointed — Chair au Canon — The Sub and the Bombardier — Ould Ireland — Another W^oolwich Job — The Antilles — Yellow Jack and Port Royal Jack ... ... ... 74

Chapter X. — " D.T." — Creole Love — Opera and Mangrove Swamp — Mother Wingrove — The Blue Mountains — A Negro Hymn — Ruined Plantation — Blacksmith and Minister — M.P. and Waiter — A Devil Fish — A Young Earthquake — Negro Disturbance — Island Hospitalities — Ordered Off — Jigger'd 84

Chapter XI. — Negro Home Rule — Amiable Aborigines — Simian Aptitudes — A Yellow Bandana — A Principal Production — Quarantine — New Providence— War Preparations — Pig Hunting — Anglo Saxon Relatives — The Imperial Octopus — A Swim for the Mail — A Fire — A Retrieving Snake — A Spectral Pipe— A Garrison Order — A Missing Detachment — Wanted for the Crimea ... ... 99.

Chapter XII. — Store Ledgers and Kit Inspection — The Autocrat of the Quarterdeck — Pugihstic — A Coral Reef — Soldier-Sailors — Peace Proclaimed — Two Greetings — Crimean Heroes — An Awkward Question — Moplahs — Wolf, the Amal — Continental— A British Matron — A Soft Seat — A Wrathful Gaul — A Telegram ... ... ... 114

Chapter XIII. — Indian Equipments — The Land of the Pharaohs — The Red Sea and Colombo — Calcutta

CONTENTS. Xlll

PAGE.

and Contemporary History — Bullock Train March — Benares Punishment Parade — A Commissary of Ordnance — The Butcha — A Plum- Pudding — A Start — Gun Elephants — The Hooshiar One — An Ekka — A/Release 131

Chapter XIV. — The Scrimmage of Secundra — Artillery Tactics in India — Chanda, a Spoilt Battle — A Regimental Legend — A Climax ... ... ... 147

Chapter XV. — Morning Orders — The Don — Jedburgh Justice — Winged Enemies — Sultanpoor — A Young May Moon — A Reconnaisance — A Word in Season — An Artillery Steeplechase — Close Quarters — "Follow me, Lads ! "—Demon Rockets — Elephantine Philosophy ... ... ... ... 1 54

Chapter XVI. — Fort Moonshee Gunj — Polite Orders — 9th Lancers — Percy Smith — An Unsuccessful Attempt — More Captured Guns — A War Correspondent ... ... ... ... ... ... 164

Chapter XVII. — The Siege of Lucknow — Defences Taken in Reverse by Outram's Force — Not allowed to Cress the Bridges on the North — Arming a Battery by Night — Tommy Butler's V.C. — Death* of an Empress Maker — Clearing Enclosures — A Card Party — Pyjamas — A Scare — We were not to take the Kaiser Bagh — A Prisoner — A Big Fish — A Kiosk — A Looted Horse — Prize Money... ... ... ... ... 169

Chapter XVIII. — Bronze Heroes — The Bayard cf India — Bolt Holes — National Contrasts — Ali Baba's Jars — A Blow up — A Long Drink and a Long Sleep — Incongruities — Nobody's Child — Dead Like a Soldier — Another Job for Jingo — The Residency Ruins — Taken Prisoner ... ... 186

Chapter XIX. — Gunners and Highlanders Routed^A Skied Gun—" X and Y "—A Gift Horse— From Tent to Palace — Unwelcome Neighbours — Poor Appetite — " Saw away, Doctor! " — Hot Weather Campaign— Variola — " Lightly Won and Lightly Lost ! " — Surprises of Sorts. ... ... ... 203

XIV CONTENTS.

PAGE.

Chapter XX. — Amalgamated Artilleries — Nightmare — Nawabgunge — Swords — The Feeders of Ravens — Truculent Fakirs — A Surprise Party — Aquatic Equitation ... ... ... ... ... ... 212

Chapter XXI. — The Jhungy Guns — Merry Sunshine —

Chapter XXII.— A Bullet without a Billet — Contradictory Orders — Paper Collars — Unlearned Lessons — A Methodical Major — Iron Cuffs — A Common Soldier's Common Honour ... ... 232

Chapter XXIII. — The Bivouac — Riding to Cover — The Throw Off — A Rasper — The Finish — Kismet — The Last of the Black Horse Battery — A Scare 246

Chapter XXIV. — An Unposted Sentry — The Longest March must have an End — A Dance of Death and Resurrection — The Lost Pension — Vaccination Marks — Sic Transit Gloria ... ... ... ... 263

Chapter XXV.— Dak-Bungalow Breakfast— The Well of Cawnpore — The Quality of Mercy Strained — The Taj — Delhi — New Drills and Old Gun Carriages— A Cropper— Hot Weather Shikar — Zubber Khan — Soldiers' Grievances — Soldiers' Colonies ... ... ... ... ... ... 271

Chapter XXVI. — Jottings from Jingo's Journal^In the Hills — Simla Thirty Years Ago — Flora and Fauna — Rope Bridge — Kooloo Valley — Polyandry— Rhotung Pass, 13,000ft. — Sources of Rivers Beas and Chenab — Wickerwork Bridge — Lahoul Valley — Women — Buddhist Temples — Praying Machines — Moravian Missions ... ... 280

Chapter XXVII. — Alone — Yaks — Lamas — Ladak Tea — Tartar Tents — Ibex — Pig-tailed Shikaris — Bara Lacha Pass — Sing Kung La Pass, 17,000 feet — Ladies' Coiffure — Bewildered Guide — Glaciers — Ladakis (Male and Female) — Babies Few — Karjuk— "O! Man I Pat Mahoon "— Lost Coolies — Watershed — Char — Sale of Kashmir — The Rajah's Rapacity — Willow-Pattern-Plate Country ... ... ... ... ... ... 291

CONTENTS. XV

PAGE.

Chapter XXVIII. — Beyond the Rains — More Lamas — Portable Praying Machines — Sampoo River — Buddhist Monastery — Zascar Valley — Monks and Nuns — Mendicity and Mendacity — Surveyors — Phegam — Zunker Ajrlacier — Servants 111 — One- Fifth of a Wife — Marmots — Pitidar — Snowstorm — Gilmotundi — Avalanche — 23,400 feet — Nunnoo Kunnoo — Pir La Moula — Abode of Snow Spirit — Crevasses — Dumohi — W^urdwan Valley — Kashmiri Character — Nagan Undher — Wounded Bear — Peculiar Pipe — Grass Sandals — Unsuccessful Ibex Stalk — Sacrifice a Sheep — Successful Bear and Bara Singa Shooting — Martund Ruins — Islamabad— Under the Chenars... ... ... ... 302

Chapter XXIX. — Lotus Eating — Peri Mahal — Mogul Dynasty — Nautch Girls — Punditanas — A Lady Killer — An Evening Party — Twelve Tined Ones — Star Chamber — More Bears — Camel Ride — Tale of a Foot — Missing Mahatmas — Mahometan Christian — Zubber Khan's Farewell ... ... 317

Chapter XXX. — Piping Times of Peace — ^^Cholera Creeds — A Sainted Scamp — Widows and Weddings — Honeymoon March — Drumhead Discipline — Chinese Gordon asks in Vain — Lights and Shadows on a Sun Dial — Farewell East ... ••• 33i

Chapter XXXI. — Homeward Bound — Sailoring — Overboard— Gunnery School — A Royal Gunner — Military Lessons of Sorts — Volunteers — Aldershot — Chalons — Two Stories of 1870 — Bazaine — Gordon 338

Part Ii.— Westward Ho !

Chapter I. — Quebec — King Cash-Balance — The Old Flag — The New Guard — Winter Armament — English Ears — The Ice Cone — Tandems — Winter Bivouacs — Canadian Seigneurs — Lord Dufferin — The Phantom Fox — Electricity. ... 347

XVI CONTENTS.

PAGE.

Chapter II. — The Tricoleur and the Green — Goldwin Smith — Blue Blouse — An Inquest — Captain Short — The Centenary of 1875 — Charles Kingsley — The Marquis of Lome and the Princess — Palliser Guns — Mission to British Columbia — The Mormons — Lost Boundaries — Canadian Military College... ... ... ... ... ... ... 365

Chapter III. — Too Old to Soldier — Start a Ranche — Blackfeet Neighbours — Legal Difficulties — General Jingo's Hardest March — Crowfoot and Old Sun — Horse-thieves, Red and White — A Judas Kiss — House Building, Well-sinking, etc. — Cattle Killing — Round-ups — Broncho-Busting — First War Note —Indian Strength — White Weakness — Called to Command — Old Soldiers Turn Up ... ... ... ... ... ... 380

Chapter IV. — Storm Foreseen — Causes — Party Politics — Amnestied Rebel and Murderer — Land Claims Unadjusted — Prairie Indians no Practical Grievance — Cattle Killing Impunity— Destruction of Buffalo — Northern Indians — The Squaw and the Agent's Dog — Annexation Scheme ... ... 400

Chapter V. — Telegram of Fight at Duck Lake — Burning of Fort Carlton and Retirement of Police to Prince Albert — Blackfoot Scare at Calgary — Raising Mounted Corps — High and Bow River and Military Colonizatian Ranche Patrols — Ordered to March to Join General Middleton — Who can Take Care of Himself — Dancing, Raiding, and Patrolling — " Non Possumus " — Red Men on the W^ar Path — W^hite Men Denouncing Everybody and Everything — As I can get no Arms, Ammunition, nor Authority, Propose to Disband Troops I have Raised — Excellent Results, backed by Frog Lake Massacre ... ... 404

Chapter VI. — Letter to Lieutenant-Governor — Alarm of C.P.R. Employes— Strike of C.P.R Workmen- Appointed to Command in Alberta — Its Size — General Middleton Orders up Militia — Field Force Order — Two Raw Militia Battalions — 300 Miles Frontier Patrolled — Colonel Ouimet's Trip

CONTENTS. XVll

PAGE.

East — Ammunition Factories — Equipment and Supplies take Time — A Princess's Gift — " Owre Mony Maisters " — Police Placed under Military Law — Expense of Extemporising Transport. ... 413

Chapter VTI. — Burnt Prafirie and Severe Snowstorms — 65th Voltigeurs — Scout Cavalry — Light Kit and Magazine Rifle make Dr. Johnson's Dragoon Pope's Essay on Man — Revised Version — Buffalo Bill Parade — A Protective Tariff on Saddles — First Advance — Snowblind Scouts — And Rev. Scouts — Amalgamated Police and Military Code — A Brigade-Major's Frictional Electricity — No Climate — Sloughs of Despond — Winnipeg Light Infantry — Three Successive Convoy Columns — Camp Orders — Sportmg Medicos — Canadian Pioneers— Indian Signalling — Peccant and Penitent Indians — King George's Men — Fort Edmonton — -H.B.C 426

Chapter VIII. — Fort Edmonton put into a State of Defence — Incessant Drill and Target Practice — Elastic Boat Building — Anticipated Famine in the North — Teamsters' Strike — Scout Cavalry and 65th Advance to Victoria, leaving Detachments — Collecting Supplies — Rear Column Close Up — Newspaper News— Fish Creek — Fort Pitt — Half- Breed Scare — Flour-Clads not Appreciated — Suggested Experiments Relegated to the Enemy — Plan of Campaign — "Ma Boule Roulant " — Edmonton Folk — My Own Affairs... ... ... 446

Chapter IX. — Order of March — Queen's Birthday at Frog Lake — Massacre — Fort Pitt — Commentary on the Gospel — Scouts on the Wrong Trail — Steele's First Skirmish — Frenchman's Butte ... 460

Chapter X. — Non-returning Messengers — First Provision Convoy — Indian Rifle Pits — Cul-de-Sac — Seven Trails — Steele on Big Bear's Track — Chivalrous Red Men — Some Prisoners Released — General Middleton with Reinforcements — Steele's Fight — Race for H.B.c! Store— The Shade of *' Malbrook "—More Muskeg — The Beaver River — Chippwayan Surrender — General Middleton comes

XVlll

CONTENTS,

PAGE.

to Beaver River — Pow-Wow — Colonel Williams at Frog Lake — More Boat Building — Colonel Osborne Smith crosses to Cold Lake — Captain Constantine scouts East — McLeans traced to Lac des lies — Mr. Bedson meets Them — Force Broken Up — Causes of Muskegs — My Old Opponent and Myself both Suffer — Conclusion of Official Dispatch ... ... ... ... 494

Chapter XL — Colonel Montizambert's Report on " A "

and " B " Batteries — Major Short's Home Coming 511

Chapter XIL— My Son to the Old Corps— The Pillar of Cloud by Day — The Pillar of Fire by Night — Indian Revenge — A Broken Leg — A Friend in Need — A Forfeited Pension — General Jingo's Jubilee — Consolation — Farewell Canada ... 520

Chapter XIIL — A Gun with a Soul — Hawaii Found and Lost — The Girdle of Empire — Nigger Butcher or Hero — American Patriotism — Australian Natives' Association — Old Colonists — Germany and Russia in the Pacific — Colonial Governors — Democracy — Inter- Imperial Free Trade — Postal Muddles — The British Disunited States — Australian Heptanarchy — A Peripatetic Council — United Empire 527

Chapter XIV. — Finis.

Full Page Illustrations.

Petticoat Influence ...

Europa Point ...

Pepita ...

Chutter Munzil Palace, Lucknow...

A Conquering Captive

Noah's Ark Camp ...

Alec Galbraith's Leap

Habet!

Buddhist Monastery, Ladak, Zascar Valley

Title,

4 40

58 191 197 229 252

255 303

CONTENTS. XIX

PAGE

Kashmiri Punditanas ... ... ... ... ... 320

B Battery's Christmas Greeting ... ... ... ... 349

Military Colonization Ranche ... ... To pice 392

Maps.

Part of Dominion of Canada ... ... ... ... 396

Battle of Frenchman's Butte ... ... ... ... 489

PART I.— CHAPTER I.

Soldier Jhat — Petticoat Influence — " Enfant de Troupe " — Waterloo — Piety and Profanity — Tales of My Grandmother —A Royal Spree — A Burst with the Hounds—" Pallida Mors " — School Days and Holidays — Irish Highlanders — A Non-competition Wallah.

My hero was not a hero, though of soldier caste. His earliest recollection was of the dusty maidan of Meerut, as he and his brother cantered on their ponies, Sycefollowed, along the line of the old Cameronian Regiment, whose tall white feathers stuck out of monstrous widetopped shakos.

Being a boy he had no right to a doll — but he had one — a soldier doll in a red coat. He cut its arm off to make it more closely resemble Colonel Oglander, the old chief of the Cameronians, who had lost an arm in the Peninsula. The amputation was followed by a copious effusion of sawdust which threatened the solidarity of the doll, but his mother, with the kindly surgery of her needle, saved the idol of her boy, which imaged the grim idol of that grim old covenanting regiment.*

Half a century later, an old veteran hobbled on to a parade ground in British North America, and talked of the old Colonel to the new Colonel — the boy he had seen on his pony. The old Cameronian had kept his broad bonnet,

*A bronze statue of the Earl of Angus, who raised the 26tti, or Cameronian Regnnent in 1689, has been unveiled by the Earl of Douglas, in Lanarkshire, in the presence of the Lord Provost of Glasgow, several of the past and present officers of the regiment and others. The statue, which is by Mr. Brock, R.A., has been erected to commemorate the 20oth anniversary of the raising of the regiment, and is so placed that the figure overlooks the ground on which the first parade of the regiment was held. — " Times," Sept. 12th, 1892.

B

GUNNER JINGO S JUBILEE.

covered with white linen, as it was in India, to be buried with him in the new world he had survived to reach — where he had seen with scorn the modern skimp glengarry transferred to the Irish and English Regiments as well as to Highlanders recruited in Manchester composing what is called our localised army.

The subject of our sketch was called *' Tommy," supposed to be short for the more euphonious nomenclature bestowed upon him by his godfathers and godmother, who had promised far more for Tommy in the matter of renunciation of " the world, the flesh, and the devil " than he was able to perform.

From the Meerut cantonment Tommy was carried across the deadly Terai to the health-giving Himalayas, where his observations were mostly confined to the tops of the lofty Deodars, whose roots were far down in the valley below ; owing to his feet being generally higher than his head in a sort of ** Palky " — a position not favourable to accurate observation.

Fortunately for veracious chroniclers, there are great hiati in the recollections of childhood. Tommy's next was the stately Indiaman, homeward bound, with a cargo composed largely of Indian children, those terrors to the modern young man, who, however, is not averse to cultivating their grasswidowed mammas on Indian troopships.

Tommy was promptly taken captive by a little lady in frilled trousers and two pig-tails. As the old Jacobite ballad has it :

''There's a rose in the garden for you, young man.

To kiss the pretty girl with the trousers on ;" —

and Tommy did it early and often, as the Irishman votes in America. Possibly the reprehensible tendency and abject submission to petticoat influence thus early displayed was due to heredity.

PETTICOAT INFLUENCE. 5

One of Tommy's ancestors had found himself in Prince CharHe's body-guard at Culloden, because his best girl had sewed a white cockade in his hat and he had not had the pluck to pull it off. When, however, a round shot broke his sword in his hand and so saved him the trouble of sheathing it in a hopeless cause, his lady-love proved equal to the occasion and got him out of one fix by putting him into another. When her lover, pursued by the " Seidther Roy " (Red Soldiers), King George's Dragoons, threw himself at her feet, she promptly raised her petticoat and placed him in safety under its protecting hoops, as she sat at the harpsichord, that did duty in those days for a piano. As the King's officer entered she did not rise, but played a defiant Jacobite air. He bowed politely, lifting his three-cornered hat, and said he was bound to search for her attainted lover. She smiled sweetly and imploringly on the King's officer, bidding him search where he pleased. The defiant melody died away into a Highland Lament, and her tears began to fall on the ivory keys. The King's officer was a gentleman first and a Hanoverian after. He took in the situation, for a third and larger foot protruded beneath the lady's dress. The officer politely kissed the lady's hand, whispering :

'* I, too, would fain be a rebel to secure such hiding place," treading heavily at the same time on her lover's clumsy foot, * half in jealous anger at the coign of vantage which he envied, and also to warn the rebel that he must not linger in so compromising a situation, t

The lady played *'God save the King," in token of gratitude, as his Majesty's officer descended the stairs and withdrew his men. The lover escaped to Italy, and the lady procured his pardon, return, and Knighthood, by presenting to the King, '* the pair of handsome Grenadiers she had gotten for his Majesty's Service."

Perhaps the pardon was granted all the more readily inasmuch as the other branch of her husband's family, '* dour Whigs " as they were, had raised a company of foot, and fought for King George II., who presented them with drums and colours.

Poor little Tommy, ignorant of his family history and

*This historic foot has descended in all its grandeur to Tommy. fSee Dennistoun's Memoirs of Sir R. Strange and A. Lumsden.

O GUNNER JINGO S JUBILEE.

unconscious of heredity, only followed his instincts in loving the little lady in the pantelettes.

*' On revient toujours a ces premiers amours ?" Bah ! he never saw the small lady again, and promptly forgot her in the more exciting process of collecting Barrack boys of the old Pongo* Battalion for raids against the town boys at Chatham. In one scrimmage he got a blow with a stick that laid him up for months, and might thus early have finished his career and prevented this veracious history being written.

His military tendencies were still further developed by long walks with his father about the Chatham Lines, where the deep ditches inspired a sort of awe, heightened by his father's explanations of the mysteries of curtain, flank, and bastion redoubt and ravelin, so that years afterwards, when he entered a Military College fortification came to him as by intuition.