Sergeant: "He does not, sir."
"Does he draw a rum allowance?"
"He does, sir."
"Well, away to the Captain of his company, and say it's my orders that the oldest soldier in this bairn's company is to draw his rum, till he feels convinced it's for the lad's benefit that he should tak it himsel'—and that'll not be just yet awhile I'm thinking."
Some brilliant tales too of the wit and gallantry of Irish comrades, several of whom wore the kilt. And almost neatest of all, a story of coming across a fellow-villager among the Highlanders:
"But I were fair poozled He came from t' same place as me, and a clever Yorkshireman too, and he were talking as Scotch as any of 'em. So I says, 'Why I'm beat! what are you talking Scotch for, and you a Knaresborough man?' 'Whisht! whisht! Dickinson,' he says, 'we mun a' be Scotch in a Scotch regiment—or there's no living.'"...
February 19, 1880.
I have been re-reading the Legend of Montrose and the Heart of Midlothian with such delight, and poems of both the Brownings, and Ruskin, and The Woman in White, and Tom Brown's Schooldays, etc., etc.!!! I have got two volumes of The Modern Painters back with me to go at.
What a treat your letters are! Bits are nearly as good as being there. The sunset you saw with Miss C——, and the shadowy groups of the masquers below in the increasing mists of evening, painted itself as a whole on to my brain—in the way scenes of Walter Scott always did. Like the farewell to the Pretender in Red Gauntlet, and the black feather on the quicksand in The Bride of Lammermuir.
March 1, 1880.