"No particular one, sergeant? You don't mean Miss Mamie on Charles street, do you? Insatiate archer!" cried Charley.
"Do your cooking, you imp! I mean my dear old mother and my sick sister. D——n this smoke! It will get in a fellow's eyes!"
When Miss Todd gave her picnic in the valley of Jehoshaphat and talked London gossip under the olives, it was an odd picture; it is strange to see the irrepressible English riding hurdles in the Campagna, and talking of ratting in the shadow of the Parthenon, as though within the beloved chimes of Bow; but it was stranger still to see those roughened, grimed men, with soleless boots and pants tattered "as if an imp had worn them," rolling out town-talk and well-known names in such perfectly natural manner.
And this was only a slice from any camp in the service. The gentlemen troops stood hardships better, and bore their troubles and difficulties with lighter hearts, than any of the mixed corps. It is true that few of them were left as organizations at the end of the war.
As the army increased, men of ability and education naturally sifted to higher place; but they wore their spurs after they had won them. They got their commissions when they had been through the baptism of blood and fire, and of mud and drudgery as well. They never flinched. The dreariest march—the shortest rations—the deepest snow and the midnight "long roll"—found them ready and willing. History furnishes no parallel. The bloods of the cavalier wars rode hard and fought long. They went to the battle with the jest upon their lips, and walked gaily to the scaffold if need be. But they not only died as gentlemen—they lived as they died. Their perfumed locks were never draggled in the mire of the camp, and their silken hose never smirched but in the fray. Light songs from dainty lips and brimming goblets from choice flacons were theirs; and they could be merry to-night if they died to-morrow.
The long rapiers of the Regency flashed as keen in the smoke of the fight as the jest had lately rung in the mistress' bower; and how the blasé club man and the lisping dandy of Rotten Row could change to the avenging war god, the annals of the "Light Brigade" can tell.
But these lived as gentlemen. In the blackest hour, when none believed "the king should have his own again;" in the deadliest fray and in the snow-bound trench, they waved the sword of command, and the only equality they had with their men was who should fight the furthest.
But here were gentlemen born—men of worth and wealth, education and fashion—delving side by side with the veriest drudge; fighting as only gentlemen can fight, and then working as gentlemen never worked before!
Delicately bred youths who had never known rougher work than the deux temps, now trudged through blinding snows on post, or slept in blankets stiff with freezing mud; hands that had felt nothing harder than billiard-cue or cricket-bat now wielded ax and shovel as men never wielded them for wages; the epicure of the club mixed a steaming stew of rank bacon and moldy hard-tack and then—ate it!
And all this they did without a murmur, showing an example of steadfast resolution and unyielding pluck to the hardier and tougher soldiers by them; writing on the darkest page of history the clear axiom: Bon sang ne peut mentir!