red; nay, you may even be startled sometimes
by the phenomenon of a white or black chicken
springing from parents of what the Trench call
"couleur fauve."

In conclusion, I heartily recommend to all
who want a good hobby—to nervous low-spirited
people especially—poultry. Even the cares
which inevitably come upon every one who
embarks the smallest quantity of regard upon
any living creature will abstract the mind from
heavier thoughts. Then, what an agreeable
réveil it is on a summer's morning to let out
your chickens of four months to frolic in their
playground! They rush to sport, as young
things only rush; they flutter forward with
outstretched wings; they climb upon the bushes,
and sometimes one may see a pullet sitting on a
bough, while the others are swinging her, until
they, too, take their turn to be swung.

Verily, to me, my poultry-yard is a microcosm
in which, at a safe distance, I may study the
big world, and over which presiding, I may be
happy myself in studying the greatest happiness
of the greatest number.

GOING FOR A SOLDIER.

THE Indian snake-charmer can find a fitting
parallel in the English recruiting-sergeant.
Both subdue their auditors by music, and the
musical instruments they employ for their
respective purposes are of the most primitive
description. Any one who has ever watched
the operations of the recruiting-sergeant in a
country village, with his fifer and drummer and
Man Jack, will surely endorse this assertion.
Clowns and joskins are drawn open-mouthed
from their holes by the dulcet strains of martial
music, and the flying ribands of the "soger
men." They open at once a mental panorama
in Giles's brain of the "Battles of the British
Army," in which generals, horses, cannon, fifers,
drummers, recruiting-sergeants—ribands and all
—and other panoramic effects of a bloody battle,
are mixed up in a mass, and dodge and buzz
about in a manner truly bewildering to that
simple worthy. The upshot of the proceeding
is, that Giles and two or three of his mates list
for sogers, and are carried away by the scarlet
kidnapper. But, dress this same warlike-looking
sergeant à la Spurgeon, take away the fifer and
the drummer and the scarlet cloth and the
ribands, and Giles will be very scarce. Giles
must have a gaudily-painted fly for a bait or he
will not bite at all.

Recruiting for the English army has been briskly
renewed within the past few months. Some men
enter the service from choice; some in order to
destroy their identity, for reasons best known to
themselves; nearly all, from pure necessity. It
may be likened with justice to an immense sewer,
which receives the social drainage of the kingdom.

The recruit, on first joining, undergoes a
species of military baptism in the ablution-house:
at the close of which ceremony he assumes her
Majesty's livery, perhaps for life, and parts with
his former habiliments with pleasure or regret,
according to the actual value of those articles.
Wherever he goes, he is a walking advertisement
of his own rawness. Every article on him
looks painfully new to the eye, and he appears
as if he were always marching to "attention,"
so stiff and unbending is he. He exhibits a
decided partiality for his "stock"—a leathern
duplicate of some iron affair of torture in the
Tower—and performs menial tasks with it on.
He wanders about in a helpless abstracted
manner, buttoned up to the throat, with his
chin-strap either in his mouth, or under his chin
according to regulation. In course of time, that
useless appendage will be comfortably adjusted
for him by some old soldier, in the little indentation
formed by nature for its reception, between
the under lip and the projection in question.
The old soldier will teach him other useful things,
which shall stand him in good need by-and-by.
He will teach him how to soldier, in short, in
the most approved professional manner.

The first days of his recruitdom are,
perhaps, the pleasantest in his whole service, for
the Queen's bounty has then to be spent, or
rather transferred to the till of the Cross
Muskets outside the barrack gate, in instalments
varying from five to ten shillings. Mentor
and Telemachus will revel in luxury while
it lasts. The old soldier is in the zenith of his
glory then. He makes hay while the sun
shines, and when the inevitable last shilling will
turn up, he helps to spend it with a sorrowful
heart, and collapses into his solitary self again.
He deigns no longer to enlighten his former
pupil in the old professional manner, but
vouchsafes only curt snappish bouncing sentences.
His work is done. He folds his hands in peace,
spends his fourpence-a-day on himself, and looks
about for another windfall.

There are different types of recruit. There
is the knowing recruit who has been in the
militia, and who wants to aspire at once to the
dignity of the old soldier. This specimen is
generally taken down a peg or two before long.
He keeps his "bounty" to himself. He acts as
his own Mentor, and fees himself for services
rendered by himself to himself in that capacity.
He is a great eyesore to the professional old
soldiers, and is sent to Coventry immediately,
whence he seldom returns without first paying his
back-fare. Then we have the genteel recruit. This
variety has no earthly business in the army. He
leaves home in consequence of some "family
difference," and seems to take a fiendish delight
in making himself as miserable as possible—out
of revenge perhaps. He walks about the
barrack-square with his hands in his pockets, and
numbers three, four, and five, buttons of his
jacket unfastened to display a white pocket-
handkerchief. He sets his watch regularly by
the barrack clock, and will tell you the time with
pleasure, though the clock itself is within a few
yards of him. He is very foud of producing
from one of his pockets a fat mysterious pocket-
book, filled to repletion with papers one would
like immensely to read, and another little pocket-