and was dismissed with a rather more severe
reprimand than if he had stolen a watch; did I
endeavour to come to the rescue, I was received
with bland smiles and disbelieving shoulder
shrugs, and with pleasant hints that "the
subaltern officers had really better not expose
themselves." Now this was trying to all,
especially to Jack Heatly, who is as explosive as
a volcano, and who used to make a light meal
off his lips and tongue in endeavouring to
maintain his reticence; but as the members of the
council were indefatigable in their zeal at drill,
punctual in their attendance, and showed
thoroughly that they had the welfare of the
corps at heart, we put up with it all, and got
rapidly under weigh.

Of course it was necessary that we should
accumulate as ample funds as possible, besides
the subscription of the members; and with this
view the council determined that a select few of
us should call upon the inhabitants and ask for
donations. The list of names was divided into
three portions, and I as junior officer had the
most implacable enemies of the movement
allotted to me to visit. Now, it has been my
fate to have been placed in many humiliating
positions during my life. I have been
compelled to act a knight in a charade with a tinpot
on my head for a helmet and a towel-horse for
my charger, and in this guise to make love to a
very stout old lady before the grinning faces of
deriding friends. I have been asked to "do" an
orange "nicely" for a young lady at dessert,
and, owing to my having blind eyes and utterly
immobile stiff fingers, have bungled thereat in a
manner contemptible to behold. On the King's-
road, at Brighton, I have ridden a flea-bitten
grey horse formerly a member of a circus,
which, in the presence of hundreds of the
aristocracy then and there assembled, persisted
in waltzing to the music of a German band; but
never was I so thoroughly ashamed of myself
as on the errand of requesting donations for the
Grimgribber volunteers. In ten places they
told me plainly they would not give anything –
and next to those who gave willingly, I liked
these best; in others, they shook their heads
and sighed, and said it did not augur well for
any movement which commenced by sending
round the begging-box; some were virtuously
indignant, and denounced us as openly
inciting foreign attack by our braggadocio;
some declined to give because they were
comfortably persuaded that the end of the world
was so close at hand that our services would
never be required; one old farmer, known to be
enormously rich and horribly penurious, offered
us a threepenny piece, a brass tobacco-box, and
a four-bladed knife with a corkscrew in the
handle.

But perhaps my noblest interview was with
Mr. Alumby, our senior churchwarden, who
lives at The Hassocks, close outside the
village, and who has the credit of being the best
hand at an excuse, of any man in the county.
Overwhelmingly polite was Alumby, offered me
a chair with the greatest hospitality, spoke
about our Queen, our country, our national
defences, and the patriotic body of men now
coming forward, in a way that made my ears
tingle; but he declined to subscribe. On
principle, on principle alone; in any other possible
manner that he could aid us, he would, but he
could not give us money, as he thought such a
proceeding would deprive the movement of its
purely voluntary character! I was so staggered
that I paused for a moment, overcome: then I
suggested that this feeling might not prevent
his helping us in another way: we wanted a
large space to drill in – would he lend us his
field? He hesitated for a minute, and then
asked if I meant his field in Grimgribber, at
the back of his house? On my replying in the
affirmative, his face expressed the deepest
concern; " he could not spare a blade of that
grass – not a blade – he required it all for
grazing purposes, and it must not be trampled
upon; but he had considerable property in
South Wales, and if that had been any use
to us he could have put hundreds of acres
at our disposal." However, notwithstanding
these rebuffs, we collected a very respectable
sum of money, and thought ourselves
justified in really commencing operations. Of
course the first and most important operation
was:

OUR DRILL.

He to whom our military education was
confided was a sergeant in the Welsh Bombardier
Guards, and he brought with him a corporal of
the same regiment as his assistant. The
sergeant was short and stout; the corporal tall and
thin; both had hair greased to the point of
perfection, and parted with mathematical
correctness; perched on the extreme right verge
of his head, the corporal accurately balanced
a little cap. Off duty the sergeant was
occasionally human in his appearance and manners,
but the corporal never; in his mildest aspect
he resembled a toy soldier; but when,
either in giving command, or taking it from his.
sergeant, he threw up his head, stiffened his
body, closed his heels, and stuck out his hands
like the signs at a French glove-shop reversed,
I can find no word to describe his wooden
nonentity. I think we all felt a little awkward at
our first introduction to our instructors; they
surveyed us, as we were drawn up in line, grimly
and depreciatingly; in obedience to a look from
his superior, the corporal then fell apace or two
back and assumed the statuesque attitude, while,
the sergeant rapped his cane against his leg and
exclaimed, "Now, genl'men, FALL IN!" the
first two words being uttered in his natural voice,
the last two in an awful sepulchral tone, and
sounding like a double rap on a bass
kettle-drum.

We "fell in" as we best could that is, we
huddled together in a long line and were then
"sized" by the sergeant, who walked gravely
down the rank, and inspected us as though we
had been slaves in the market of Tripoli, and he
the Dey's emissary, with a large commission to