He is, indeed, unbent.
Now this is the utmost stretch of our Sergeant’s amiability; and he departs with a consciousness of having made himself remarkably agreeable, at the same time that he has maintained the proper dignity of the army. To-morrow he is stiff and stately again, performing his old duty of setting up in due order men for the sport of War, that fearful skittle-player. And, indeed, how great must be the satisfaction of the Drill Sergeant when he thinks that, by his kindly solicitude, his Majesty’s subjects will “die with decency” and “in close order.” Soothing reflection!
We may liken a Recruiting Sergeant to a sturdy woodman—a Drill Sergeant to a carpenter. Let us take a dozen vigorous young elms, with the same number of bluff-cheeked, straddling rustics. How picturesque and inviting do the green waving elms appear! Whilst we look at them our love and admiration of the natural so wholly possess us that we cannot for a moment bring ourselves to imagine the most beautiful offspring of teeming earth cut up into boot-jacks or broom-handles: in the very idea there is sacrilege to the sylvan deities. The woodman, however, lays the axe to the elms (the forest groans at the slaughter); the carpenter comes up with his basket of tools across his shoulder; and at a Christmas dinner we may by chance admire the extraordinary polish of our eating knife, little thinking it owes its lustre to the elm which shadowed us at midsummer. Now for our rustics. We meet them in green lanes, striding like young ogres—carelessness in their very hat-buckles—a scorn of ceremony in the significant tuck-up of their smock-frock. The Recruiting Sergeant spirits them away from fields to which they were the chief adornment, and the Drill Sergeant begins his labour.
And now, reader, behold some martial carpentry and joinery. Our Drill Sergeant hath but few implements: as eye, voice, hand, leg, rattan. These few tools serve him for every purpose, and with them he brings down a human carcass, though at first as unwieldy as a bull, to the slimness and elegance of the roe. There are the dozen misshapen logs before him; the foliage of their heads gone with the elm leaves, as also their bark—their “rough pash,”—the frocks and wide breeches.
Mercy on us! there was a stroke of handiwork! the Sergeant with but one word has driven a wedge into the very breast of that pale-looking youngster, whose eyelid shakes as though it would dam up a tear! Perhaps the poor wretch is now thinking of yellow corn and harvest home. Another skilful touch, and the Sergeant hath fairly chiselled away some inches off the shoulder of that flaxen-headed tyro: and see how he is rounding off that mottled set of knuckles, whilst the owner redly, but dumbly, sympathises with their sufferings. There is no part left untouched by our Sergeant; he by turns, saws, planes, pierces, and thumps every limb and every joint; applies scouring paper to any little knot or ruggedness, until man, glorious man, the “paragon of animals,” fears no competition in stateliness of march, or glibness of movement, from either peacock or Punch.
The Drill Sergeant hath but little complacency in him; he is a thing to be reverenced, not doted upon; we fear him and his mysteries; even his good humour startles, for it is at once as blustering and as insignificant as a report of a blank cartridge. Again, I say, the Drill Sergeant is to be approached with awe; smirking flies the majesty of his rattan. He is the despot of joints; and we rub our hands with glee, and our very toes glow again, when we reflect they are not of his dominions.
The HANDBOOK of SWINDLING