As we arrived upon the ground, this going on. The chiefs were in council.

trial was One of my captors reported our arrival. I noticed a murmur of disappointment among the chiefs as he finished making his announcement. They were disappointed: I was not the captive they had been expecting.

No notice was taken of me; and I was left free to loiter about, and watch their proceedings, if I pleased.

The council soon performed its duty. The treason of Omatia was too well known to require much canvassing; and, of course, he was found guilty, and condemned to expiate the crime with his life.

The sentence was pronounced in the hearing of all present. The traitor must die.

A question arose-who was to be his executioner? There were many who would have volunteered for the office for to take the life of a traitor, according to Indian philosophy, is esteemed an act of honour. There would be no difficulty in procuring an executioner.

Many actually did volunteer; but the services of these were declined by the council. This was a matter to be decided by vote.

The vote was immediately taken. All knew of the vow made by Oçeola. His followers were desirous he should keep it; and on this account, he was unanimously elected to do the deed. He accepted the office.

Knife in hand, Oçeola approached the captive, now cowering in his bonds. All gathered around to witness the fatal stab. Moved by an impulse I could not resist, I drew near with the rest.

We stood, in breathless silence, expecting every moment to see the knife plunged into the heart of the criminal.

We saw the arm upraised, and the blow given, but there was no wound-no blood! The blade had descended upon the thongs that bound the captive, and Omatla stood forth free from his fastenings!

There was a murmur of disapprobation. What could Oçeola mean? Did he design that Omatla should escape? the traitor condemned by the council -by all?

But it was soon perceived he had no such intention -far different was his design.

'Omatla!' said he, looking his adversary sternly in the face, you were once esteemed a brave man, honoured by your tribe-by the whole Seminole nation. The white men have corrupted you- they have made you a renegade to your country and your cause; for all that, you shall not die the death of a dog. I will kill, but not murder you. My heart revolts to slay a man who is helpless and unarmed. It shall be a fair combat between us, and men shall see that the right triumphs. Give him back his weapons! Let him defend himself, if he can.'

The unexpected proposal was received with some disapprobation. There were many who, indignant at Omatla's treason, and still wild with the excitement produced by the late conflict, would have butchered him in his bonds. But all saw that Oçeola was determined to act as he had proposed; and no opposition was offered.

One of the warriors, stepping forward, handed his weapons to the condemned chief-only his tomahawk and knife, for so Oçeola was himself armed.

This done, by a sort of tacit understanding, the crowd drew back, and the two combatants stood alone in the centre.

The struggle was brief as bloody. Almost at the first blow, Oçeola struck the hatchet from his antagonist's hand, and with another stroke, rapidly following, felled Omatla to the earth.

For a moment the victor was seen bending over

My situation was altogether singular. As yet, the chiefs had taken no notice of my presence; and notwithstanding the courtesy which had been extended to me by those who conducted me thither, I was not without some apprehensions as to my safety. It might please the council, excited as they were with what had just transpired, and now actually at war with our people, to condemn me to a fate similar to that which had befallen Omatla. I stood waiting their pleasure, therefore, in anything but a comfortable frame of mind.

It was not long before I was relieved from my apprehensions. As soon as the affair with Omatla was ended, Oçeola approached, and in a friendly manner stretched out his hand, which I was only too happy to receive in friendship.

He expressed regret that I had been wounded and made captive by his men-explained the mistake; and then calling one of his followers, ordered him to guide me back to the fort.

I had no desire to remain longer than I could help upon such tragic ground; and, bidding the chief adieu, I followed my conductor along the path.

Near the pond, the Indian left me; and, without encountering any further adventures, I re-entered the gates of the fort.

A QUESTION.

WHAT makes my brow to throb and ache?
What makes mine eyes to weep begin?
What makes my limbs beneath me quake,
With shooting pains?, Ah me! The In-
fluenza!

What makes my hand so dry and hot?
Whence comes this changeless, ceaseless din--
This ringing in mine ears? Oh, what-
What can it be? Ah me! The In-
fluenza!

What makes me turn my 'm's' to 'b's;'
And talk of 'chill,' instead of ' chin;'
And speak profanely of my 'd-s,'
Instead of knees?' Ah me! The In-
fluenza!

What makes my nose as red as fire?
What makes such parchment of my skin?
What makes me sneeze-when my desire
Is not to sneeze? Ah me! The In-
fluenza!

No. 227.

PULAR

LITERATURE

'WANT SOMETHING TO READ.'

NEXT to 'going out to play,' * there is nothing so important to many children, most children I may say, as getting something to read. After a certain age, and the attainment of a certain amount of scholarship, almost every child begins to read to itself' it may be not omnivorously - perhaps in a very trifling manner and degree: a child who does not read at all, and does not like reading of some sort or other, is almost an anomaly now-a-days, at least, among what we proudly term 'the educated classes.'

It is curious to trace the rise, progress, and development of this branch of education, informal and unconscious, yet which, more than any others, influences the mind, character, and disposition of a growing-up child. I speak not of prodigies or precocious geniuses, but of ordinary boys and girls, just waking up to think about-not themselves they rarely trouble their little heads with selfcontemplation, and it is a very bad sign if they do -but the wonderful world they have come into; about which their chief sentiment is an insatiable curiosity.

No one can spend half a day in the company of a moderately intelligent child, if only arrived at the age of 'What's dat?' 'What zu doin'?' 'What zu dot in zu pottet?' without remarking what an extraordinary peculiarity of the infant mind is this same curiosity. 'Little people should not want to know everything'-'Little people should learn not to ask questions'-wise axioms of our grandmothers! -but I trust we are learning to deal more wisely with our little people. To the contemplative mind, there is something solemn, almost awful, in this ardent desire to know, beginning with the six-months' old babe who stretches uncertain fingers to its mother's bright neck-ribbon, or screams because it is not allowed to catch hold of the flame of the candle. A psychologist, moralising over the mysteries of our being, might perhaps see therein one of the strongest natural proofs of the soul's immortality.

PRICE 1d.

child-I shall here set down a few recollections about our reading and our books when we were children.

In those days, juvenile literature was very different from what it is now; there were no children's publishers, making it their speciality to furnish the ravenous youthful maw with the best species of aliment, employing excellent authors to chronicle Dr Birch and his Young Friends, Grandmamma's Pockets, and Good-natured Bears; and illustrating Cinderella and The White Cat with almost as good art as then adorned the walls of the Royal Academy. Even the cheap periodicals now littering about every house, and to be picked up by every child on every parlour-table, had not then begun their career. No Illustrated News-no Punch-no Household Words-no Chambers's Journal: only a month's-old magazine, or accidental newspaper, chiefly provincial-for we were provincial children—reached our eager hands. And even this species of fugitive literature was limited; we were not rich, had no large domestic library, nor did we live in a reading community. I only remember three houses where it was grand to go to tea, because-you were sure of getting a book to read. But this is forestalling.

Does any one call to mind his or her first book? The very first time when, arrived a step above c, a, t, cat, and d, o, g, dog, some strange volume, not the spelling-book, was taken in hand and blundered over, sticking at all the hard words, which were either puzzled out or skipped altogether, as character or talents impelled. Fairly got into, what a wonderful thing it was! A book-something interesting—something which out of its tame black and white pages could afford an enjoyment, intangible certainly, involving nothing to eat, or drink, or play with, yet exquisitely real, substantial, and satisfying, as nothing had ever been before.

Of my first book I have the strongest impression, still. It was The Robins-by Mrs Sherwood, I fancy, but am not sure, never having beheld it since the age of six. It was lent me by a playmate of seven, and accompanied by the gift of a little black top. The top I cherished-whipped affectionately for yearsand have got somewhere still, in memory of a warm heart that death only could ever have made cold; but the book was slighted; until, casually opening it one day, I found I could read.

*See Journal, No. 218.

It was-for the edification of my readers who know it not-the summer's history of a pair of robin-redbreasts, taken from the robin side; in fact, what I may

esting were all their domestic proceedings, from the building of the nest in the ivy wall to the successive

appearance

equalling in importance the arrival of our baby-of four young birds, Robin, Dicky, Flapsy, and Pecksy. As I write down their names, how the idea of them comes back! each as strongly individualised as any featherless bipeds I ever knew. Robin, the eldest, a brave, generous, harum-scarum bird, who, determined not to be taught to fly, but to teach himself, came to grief and a broken wing, was unable to return to the nest, and had to subsist for the rest of the summer under a dock-leaf-a 'shocking example'-fondly tended by his amiable sister Pecksy; Dicky and Flapsy-far less interesting characterswho were always allied in either mischief or pleasure, never did anything naughty or good; and the two elderly birds, exceedingly moral and parental, who, nevertheless, to my surprise, contentedly turned the young ones adrift, left the nest, and subsisted for the winter on the crumbs of the family who owned the garden.

This family, with enormously big faces, head et præterea nihil, portrayed in the frontispiece, looking in at the nest-were quite secondary characters. The bird-life was all in all. Such a glorious sense it gave of the delight of living under ivy-leaves, and being fed with a worm on a bright summer morning; of learning to fly, and then wandering at ease from tree to tree, receiving occasional moral lessons about guns, traps, and the duty of not robbing overmuch the protecting family. Memory may have exaggerated and put much in the book that was not there, but the general impression is ineffaceable. Even now when every morning I meet that graceful, gentlemanly old robin, who looks at me for a moment with his shy, bright eye, and then hops away under a gooseberrybush-I often think: 'My little friend, can you be any descendant of those familiar friends of mine, far back in distant ages, who lived-scarcely in paper and printer's ink-but in a real garden, in a real nest under an ivy-wall.'

The Robins must have been our very first era in literature. Our next was Sindbad the Sailor, Robinson Crusoe, and Jack the Giant-killer-not elegantly got up, but coarsely printed in paper-covers, with 'cuts' instead of 'plates.' Extraordinary cuts some of them were-as, seeing one of the same editions lately, I found out. Vividly it recalled all the rest: Crusoe seeing the footprints in the sand, Crusoe and his man Friday; Sindbad carried up by the roc, Sindbad put into the open coffin and let down into the funereal cave; also Jack, sitting genteelly at table with the ugliest of giants, who it was half-feared might 'frighten' us; but, bless you! we were never frightened at anything of that sort. We had no nursemaid to tell us horrible tales of 'Bogie' and the Black Man' all we ever heard or learned for the first seven years of our lives came direct from the fountainhead-the fountain of all tenderness, and safety, and loving-kindness. In this, our poverty was more

blessed than if we had been heirs to

All the wealth that fills the breeze When Coromandel's ships return from Indian seas. This reminds me that in our earlier days we thought very little of poetry. Nobody ever bothered us with Dr Watts's Hymns, or any hymns at all-nor crammed our poor little brains with cant words and phrases, of which the ideas were either totally incomprehensible, or received in a form so material as to be either ludicrous or profane. Accidentally, we lighted on 'The Busy Bee,' 'Hush, my Babe, lie still, and slumber,' took a fancy to them, and learned them by heart; also, many of the Original Poems for Children-Miss Aikin's, I believe-which have been the delight of generations. But we never meddled with religious poetry, nor were set to learn it as a task, any more than the Bible-the book of books

which we all read aloud reverently, verse by verse, elders and youngers alternately, every Sunday evening.

For our secular reading, out of lesson-time, we were obliged to depend on ourselves. The treat of being read to was quite impossible in our busy household. Therefore, possessing what is now called in grand phrase 'a healthy animalism'-which I take to mean the ordinary sanitary state of most children who are neither physicked nor 'codled '-we gave the largest portions of our energies to play, and, with the exceptions mentioned, were rather indifferent to books. Gradually, however-on wet days and long winter evenings-we began to want something to read-something real; for we were wakening up to the conviction that rocs were not as common as sparrows, and that the Liliputian which some of us longed to find and be a most loving Glumdalclitch to, was not likely to be picked up in our field, or any field. In short, we wanted facts.

And here came in a book, which I have since suspected to be as fabulous as Robinson Crusoe itself, but which then we entirely credited-Rolandi's Travels round the World. Its hero, with his companions-the naturalist, the man of science, the doctor-who, I recollect, had a most unmedical propensity for eating with all their adventures, were an inexhaustible delight. Earnestly we longed to penetrate to the interior of that marvellous Africa, the map of which, so often consulted by us prior to the days of lionhunters, persevering brothers Lander, and modest brave Livingstones-was, except for the coast-line, a mere blank-a circumstance probably all the safer for our veracious Rolandi.

Another book of adventure, which likewise I have never seen since, and which maturer wisdom is still loath to recognise as fiction, was Miss Porter's Narrative of Sir Edward Seaward. Strange that no enterprising modern publisher has ever disinterred and revived in a cheap edition that charming old book, with its bonâ-fide simplicity of detail, its exquisite picture of the solitary island where Seaward and his Eliza are wrecked, and live à la Crusoe-and Mrs Crusoe-during the first years of their married life; where they afterwards found a colony; then returning to England, bask in the favour of King George and Queen Caroline, and become Sir Edward and Lady Seaward; though something less happy, as the reader feels, than the young pair cast away on that lovely, lonely Pacific island.

The Pacific seas gained another charm for us when somewhat about this era we lighted on G. L. Craik's New Zealanders. Every many-vowelled polysyllabic name, every grim countenance therein, was familiar to us as those of our brethren and companions. Much we lamented that tattoo and paint, mats and warclubs, were not the customary costume of youthful Britons; and to live in a hut, and squat round a baked pig, seemed to us preferable to any civilised notions about houses and dinners. As it was, the sole thing left to us was to practise drinking out of a calabash, holding the-for calabash, read mug-high up, at arm's-length, in the approved New Zealand fashion. I should be sorry to confess how many times we soaked our pinafores through and through, before this art was attained in perfection.

Captain Cook's Voyages, and his Geography, in two thick quartos, with maps and engravings innumerable, came in also, to confirm the mania for all things pertaining to the southern seas, which lasted a long time, and may have influenced the family fortunes more than was then dreamed of. To this day, both to those of us who have seen it, and those who have not, there lingers a curious charm about that antipodean hemisphere, with its strange plants, strange animals, strange stars, strange skies: its

mysterious half-known continents, and its solitary coral islands starting up from the depths of undiscovered seas.

This was our sole bit of romance. Compared with what I have since heard of other people's childhood, ours seems the most matter-of-fact imaginable. We lived in a new manufacturing district, where was not a trace of legendary lore; and we must have been quite 'old' children before we ever heard about ghosts or fairies. Also, our elders and superiors, though extremely well educated, happened to have a far stronger bias towards science, mathematics, and general solid knowledge, than towards art or the poetical side of literature. The first bit of real art I ever remember to have got hold of was Flaxman's Homer-beloved still as the key-note of what has been the pleasant music of a lifetime-but I am now writing of books, not pictures. It stirred me up to the study of the Iliad and Odyssey: these two, with Thomson's Seasons and Young's Night Thoughts-after I had conquered a great dislike to the frontispiece, representing a gentleman sitting at night in his study, and Death, a skeleton with scythe and hour-glass, coming to hold with him a little cheerful conversationconstitute the only poetry-books I have any distinct recollection of.

Nobody else studied them: the family bent was all towards science. Many books of the era come to mind: Endless Amusements-which would have deserved its name, save for the unfortunate fact that the experiments therein would have cost the whole domestic income-the Boy's Own Book, and the Boy's Book of Science. This latter was thumbed over from morning till night-as may be discovered if its relics be ever exhumed for the benefit of its owner's descendants-but I myself never got further than the illustrations, which were very pretty and artistic, and consisted of little fat nude boys busy over a blowpipe, or an electrical machine, or a series of mysterious phials. I admired them much, but thought the little fellows looked rather cold, and wondered if it were always necessary to conduct scientific experiments without one's clothes.

At this period, we took to book-borrowing, in which our chief trouble was that benevolent friends would lend us 'childish' books. One of us, the little one, still recalls having Sandford and Merton thus foisted upon him, which he rejected; when being told to go and choose what he liked, he returned with Brande's Chemistry, Mrs Marcet's Conversations, Ure's Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, or something else of the kind, which alone he considered 'interesting.'

To this I attribute our indifference to Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Barbauld, and other excellent writers for children, that we read them at too late an age, when we wanted to know about men, women, and things in general. Thus, I remember luxuriating in Goldsmith's dry school-histories; having a personal friendship for Themistocles and Epaminondas, a familiar acquaintance with all the old Romans, and a passionate pity for Charles I., which made me dream over and over again, for years, of his taking refuge in our house, my putting him into the cupboard or up the chimney, then dismissing him to safety with an infinitude of blessings, caresses, and tears. After this, what were Harry and Lucy, Rosamond, and the Parents' Assistant?

To one writer of this class, now almost forgotten, I must make an exception. Few books in all my life have ever done me so much good-the true aim of all good books-as Mrs Hofland's. Simple, natural, neither dragging the young mind down to its supposed level, which it has already got far beyond, nor burdening it with dry morality, or, what is worse, religious cant, yet breathing throughout the true spirit both of religion and morality, her stories for

young people, such as the Clergyman's Widow, Blind Farmer, and Son of a Genius, deserve to live as long as there are any young people to read them. Writers for children are too apt to forget how uncommonly sharp' is the little public they have to deal with; how, whatever be its own voluntary make-believes, it is quick as lightning to detect and spurn any make-believe in grown-up people, especially when meant to take in its small self. Hypocritical goodness, impossible self-denial, it rejects at once, as it does pictures of life where the moral is incessantly intruding, where the bad child is always naughty, and the good child never does anything wrong, where the parents are paragons of superlative wisdom and faultless perfection, and every action good or bad immediately meets its reward. Such tales are not of the least value, because they are not life-they are not true. Give a child as much of fancy and imagination as ever you choose-in fairy tale, legend, and the like-which it will play with like toys, and take no harm from; but, in Heaven's name, respect in it that instinct which comes direct from Heaven, and never in word or writing, in teaching or in conduct, set before it as reality that which is not true.

About this stage in our juvenile history, a remarkable fact occurred. Our next-door neighbour began taking in a periodical-a large, small-printed folio sheet, with more 'reading' in it than any newspaper, entitled Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. How we used to rush in on Saturday afternoons to borrow it, and rush off again to some corner, where it could be read in quiet! How we hid it, and squabbled over it!— what tears it cost, what reproofs !-till at last, as the only chance of peace, the Journal was forbidden ever to enter the house; consequently, we read it in the garden. I am afraid-I know-we were very naughty; but the thirst for reading was now becoming uncontrollable in all of us. I can recall, spite of the guilty conscience with which I handled this grand bone of contention, what exquisite delight there was in hiding it under my pinafore, or under a big stone, till I could devour it in secret; how, even yet, I can see clearly the shape, form, and type of some of the articles, such as the leader entitled 'The Downdraught,' and the bit of poetry beginning,

Pretty Polly Partan, she was a damsel gaylittle, how little thinking that I should ever be confessing this in the pages of the same Journal!

But all this while, in none of us had germinated, in any shape, the romantic element. With me it first sprouted, I believe, not through anything I read, but through being read to, myself and my favourite companion, during one summer, and at intervals several other summers and winters. Dim as a dream are those readings, chosen wisely by one who knew better than most what children's tastes were, and especially what sort of tastes we two had. Fragments out of unknown books, Mary Howitt's poems and tales, Mrs Austen's German translations, Shakspeare, Scott, Chaucer-old ballads and modern verses-a heterogeneous mixture, listened to on sunshiny mornings, with the rose-scent in the hedges, and the birds hopping about on the grass-plot; or on winter evenings, rocking in the American rocking-chair, in the snug little school-room, which neither we nor our children are ever likely to revisit more. Dim as a dream, I say, but sweet as anything in my whole childhood remains the grateful remembrance of these readings and the voice that read; which, to this day, when enjoying the ineffable luxury of sitting sewing and listening to a book, seems to me about the pleasantest voice of any woman's I ever heard.

The next epoch I have to chronicle was the grand turning-point of our childhood-the literary crisis of our lives. One fatal winter, we, whose doors sickness

had rarely or never entered, caught successively measles, hooping-cough, and chicken-pox, and never went out to play again till the spring. Then, shut up in a few small rooms, weary, sickly, and crossnot dangerously ill, but ill enough to be a burden to ourselves, and a plague to one another, what could we do to pass the heavy time away? What was to become of us?

I really do not know what would have become of us-so far as temper was concerned-had it not been for the interference of a benign providence, in the shape of the bookseller of the town, who granted us free range of his circulating library. To him and to his 'young man'-getting an old man now, I conclude-who took the trouble of selecting our books, changing them as often or letting us keep them as long as ever our fancy chose; who was as patient and good-natured with us poor sick children as if we had been the grandest paying subscribers-I hereby offer-should this Journal lie on his counter, as probably it will-our warmest gratitude. It may be a hint to other book-lenders, less mindful of the cravings of reading-children; and it is a relief to our minds thankfully to confess that much of what any of us has ever been, or may be, is owing to that 'winter of our discontent' made such glorious summer' by this unlimited supply of books.

What they consisted of, it is impossible to enumerate. I know they comprised fact and fiction, provender solid and light, classical and unclassical, and that their quantity was enormous; that they set us fairly afloat on the great sea of literature, which, thenceforward, never had a bound.

Of course, individual tastes developed rapidly. Science, from a bias, became a steadily progressing knowledge; art, from a mere fancy, grew into a passion; and imaginative and romantic tendencies sprung up full-grown, as it were, in a day. Our range of novel-reading comprised everything we could lay hands upon: Scott, Bulwer, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen, and a writer whom we knew nothing about, but that he was almost as funny as his name, which was 'Boz.' I also remember our picking up the first number of a serial which we, already beginning to be critical, considered rather dull, and the characters decidedly unpleasant: it was entitled Vanity Fair. Of inferior romances, the amount of trash we consumed was something past reckoning; but, like all literary rubbish, it slipped out of our heads as fast as ever it was 'shot' into them. We never took any harm from it that I am aware of.

And here I would fain say a word about our experience of what are termed 'improper' books. We never had any, although we were allowed to read ad libitum everything that came in our way; for a very simple reason-the guardians of our morals put everything really hurtful quite out of our way. No tabooed volumes; no pages torn out, nor-as I have heard of an excellent paterfamilias doing-marked in the margin, 'Not to be read,' which seems a good deal to expect from any juvenile self-denial. Our elders never exacted from us anything they did not require from themselves: any species of literary provender wholly unfit for our youthful digestion, was either never known by us to be in the house, orbetter still-was never brought into the house at all. The only instance of prohibition or hesitation that I ever remember was the Vicar of Wakefield (why, I cannot to this day discover), which, probably from some advice of less wise friends, was laid on the top shelf of the book-cupboard with, 'Better read it when you are a little older.' I gazed at it longingly for some weeks, then climbed up, and read the first twenty pages or so-for I did not find it interesting enough to read further-standing perched on the back of a chair.

Shakspeare even-that great difficulty of parentswas freely allowed; but no one took advantage of the permission except myself, and I did not care much for him, except for the purely imaginative plays, such as the Tempest, Midsummer Night's Dream, and Winter's Tale. Still, I must have read him all through, for I scarcely remember the time when I did not know Shakspeare-but I understood him very little for a great many years. As for seeing any evil in him, I would as soon have thought of seeing it in the Bible, which, not to speak irreverently of the Holy Word, contains a good deal that the fastidious delicacy of the present day might consider not exactly proper for children.'

Therefore, if individual experience may be allowed to say so, I do think that with children brought up in a virtuous, decorous home, where, 'to the pure, all things are pure,' the best plan is to exclude entirely all glaring coarsenesses and immoralities, but especially immoralities, for the tone of a book has far more influence than its language; and Don Juan has done incalculably more harm than the grossest phraseology of Christian-hearted, moral, though rudetongued Shakspeare. Afterwards, let the young creatures read everything, and take their chance. In that evil world which one sickens at their ever knowing, and yet they must know it and fight through it, as their Maker ordains, or He would never have put them into it-the best safeguard is, not total ignorance of vice, but the long habitual practice and love of virtue.

Into that world-across the enchanted ocean of which our pilot was the benevolent bookseller, who, I trust, under this anonymous, and through the oblivion of years, may yet recognise his own good deed-we children quickly passed. Therein, our readings, like our doings, concern nobody but ourselves, so that I will no longer continue the chronicle.

It will, however, have served some purpose, if, in its literal facts, it carries any suggestions to either reading-children or their parents, during what may be called the cacoëthes legendi; when toys delight not, plays weary, playmates are quarrelled with, and the sole cry from morning till night is, 'I want something to read.'

TRIAL BY ORDEAL IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

ABOUT ten years ago, I was a jolly sub in the regiment Bengal native infantry, commonly known through the presidency by the name of the 'Ugly Mugs;' a facetious general having told us once that he never inspected a smarter or an uglier corps in his life. We were ordered to a remote station south of the Nerbudda, much nearer either Madras or Bombay than Calcutta, and since then very wisely transferred to the former presidency. On arriving there, in the beginning of the hot weather, I found bungalows scarce and dear, and was only too glad to meet an old friend (the artillery subaltern in charge of post guns), who offered to sell me half his bungalow, and, better still, give me long tick for the payment. I accordingly accepted the offer, breathing a mental prayer that Plutus, as represented by the secretary of the Agra Bank, might be propitious when the time of payment came. There were no troops in the station except our own corps, which, between staff appointments and detachments, was very weak in officers. We were cut off from all the amusements and amenities of civilised life. Our billiard-table was useless, as the two centre slabs, after receiving sundry compound fractures, reposed quietly at the bottom of a nullah. Even that last resource of the miserable, matrimony, was denied us, there being neither spinster