—quite black, with a skimming of dirty lather
on the top. Having plunged into this, we
(there were a few besides me) went into the
surgeon's office, there to await examination.
I stayed nearly two hours before my turn
came. There were, besides me, I should think
about thirty all together when I went in, and
more were constantly arriving. A man came into
the ante-room where we were, and shouted for
"the next," and if the individual he wanted was
not undressed and all ready, he cursed the man,
and then cursed the sergeant who had brought
him. At length my turn came. I was not
undressed, and this man inquired if I was asleep,
and if I expected to be undressed by next
summer. I soon replied that I was ready.
Through a double rank of sergeants of every
regiment in the service, perfectly naked, I went
into the doctor's room.

The doctor was sitting at a table writing, and
did not look round. The man shouted my
name, and I suppose the doctor was noting
down my age, calling, height, and so forth.
The man during this time was giving him my
height, &c. The doctor presently looked up,
and told me to hop across the room on the left
leg and to come back on the right in the same
manner. I also jumped over a chair, drew a
long breath while the doctor hearkened at my
left breast through a small tube, and the
examination was ended. He said nothing when I
went out, but by the time I was dressed the
ill-tempered man, seeing the sergeant standing,
said, " What are you standing there for, Clark?
Get out of this; your man's passed!"

I received, on getting out, fourteenpence-
halfpenny, being that day's pay. The day I
enlisted was on a Wednesday, and we did not
join the depot until Saturday. There were
about one hundred and fifty recruits at this
time at the public-house in Charles-treet, all
waiting to join their respective regiments. All
these slept at this house. The house looks
small in front, but they have several large
rooms at the back, each of which contains
fifteen or twenty beds, and is fitted up to
resemble a barrack-room. The recruits were of
all classes, all trades, and from every part of
England, Ireland, and Scotland. Some of them
were only sent that day from places in the
north of England, and had never been in
London before. None that I conversed with
acknowledged that the pure love of being a
soldier had actuated them to enlist. It was in
every case destitution. I met with the same
answer when I questioned those in barracks.
Not one in twenty ever enlist because they
like it, but because they see nothing but
starvation staring them in the face.

The next morning after enlistment I went
before the adjutant. I don't know his name,
as his signature could not be made out, except
by the initiated. The morning after I went
before the colonel, and the next morning I was
sent to Cannontown. I must not forget going
on the Friday afternoon before the magistrate
at Westminster Police Court to be sworn in.
The magistrate signed his name, certainly,
saying that so and so had sworn " before me," but
I never saw him. His clerk did it all. One
recruit with me was telling the sergeant who
accompanied us to the police-office that he
would get on well in the cavalry (the corps he
had joined), as he had served in a similar
capacity in the late war in America.

Sergeant Blue, of the Dragoon Guards, eyed
him with contempt. " America, eh? What sort
of animals had they over there?"

The recruit said, "Very good," and then a
pause. He added, "Not perhaps so good as
yours—the fact was, we had mules."

"Mules! oh crickey, shouldn't I have liked
to have seen 'em charge! Why, the dragoons
would double them up—ay, like that," said the
sergeant, cracking his fingers.

Sergeant Blue was particularly tickled at the
idea of mules making " a charge," and roared
with laughter.

I got very tired of Charles-street before
Saturday morning. Fourteenpence-halfpenny a
day was not much—scarcely enough to buy
food with. I had only been three days, and how
much more wearied must some of the recruits
have been who were there three weeks! Some
of them actually had been that time, and they
complained of it, and justly too. All, however,
were in good spirits, and anticipating good
things in their regiments with a simplicity I
have often laughed at since. Another thing I
got tired of was the endless " going before"
this person and that. I had not done yet,
though. On the Saturday morning we were
awoke at seven o'clock, and met our guide,
Staff-Sergeant Merry. There were seven of us
in all, three for Cannontown, and the remainder
for Ireland. We stayed just over London
Bridge in a coffee-house for breakfast, and
during that time the sergeant had an animated
argument with the coffee-house-keeper about the
Jamaica affair. Sergeant Merry maintained
that Governor Eyre was an angel, and that the
Morning Planet was all wrong in supposing
that Gordon was murdered.

"I tell you what," continued the sergeant,
"there are a lot of people who are never so
happy as when crying down the English and
applauding everything un-English, and the Morning
Planet is their mouthpiece." The coffee-
house-keeper as stoutly defended the other side,
and praised John Bright, and cursed everybody
who disagreed with the honourable member for
Birmingham. Sergeant Merry got quite excited,
and entered so fully into the argument as to get
up from his coffee and nearly approach his
antagonist, putting an extra stress upon every word
by a loud thump on the table.

The time for starting arrived very quickly,
and all the way to the station the sergeant
anathematised those who criticised Governor
Eyre, and said he knew what the blacks were.

A soldier can always travel second-class with
a third-class fare, and so we all got comfortably
seated on leather. The sergeant, in going down
the line, explained the several places. " That's