70.—[A CRISIS]
71.—[CONCLUSION]
OLIVER ELLIS.
CHAPTER I.
BOYHOOD.
"When is a man the arbiter of his own destiny? for he is like the leaf which is torn from a tree, and which the wind of heaven blows about."
This fate has been my own, as peculiarly as it has been that of other military wanderers in life; for your soldier is a great traveller both by sea and land, an errant and a restless spirit; yet his travels and his restlessness are involuntary; for the moment he dons the red coat he ceases to be the master of "his own proper person," or (like the leaf torn from the tree) to be the arbiter of his own destiny; but must march, sail, or fight wheresoever he may be ordered, obedience being the first word in his vocabulary. He becomes a machine in some sort, yet not a machine according to the degrading idea of his sapient majesty of Prussia; for the history of mankind will prove that the most brilliant achievements in war, and the most happy results in peace, like those efforts by which thrones have been won and nations freed, had their origin in the influence of the human heart, and in the mastery of the human passions, when hope, religion, or love of country, fired the soldier's spirit! Who, then, will dare to say that the poor private soldier who mounts a deadly breach, or rushes on a hedge of steel, risking mutilation, wounds, and death, without the hope of future fame if he falls, or the chance of sharing in the glory of the victory his valour wins if he survive,—is the mere automaton, the cold in blood and basely utilitarian would have him to be?
Love of country, a noble sentiment, is ever strong in the heart of a true soldier. When the 67th, or South Hampshire regiment, commanded by Callender of Craigforth, landed at Portsmouth in 1772, after a long career of dangerous foreign service, with one accord and impulse the whole of the men threw themselves on the beach and kissed the pebbles.
The reader will pardon the professional vanity, or esprit de corps, which makes me thus prelude the plain unvarnished story of a soldier's career,—a description of some of the adventures I have passed through, the persons I have met, and the scenes I have witnessed on my march through life.
I was born in the camp of Burgoyne's army when it was on the borders of Lake Champlain: thus, the first sounds to which my infant ears became accustomed were the rattle of the drum, the notes of the Kentish bugle, the tread of marching feet, and the thoughtless hilarity of my father's comrades.