Sandy all the world will show
He will beat the best—or die!
MODERN TYPES.
(By Mr. Punch's Own Type-Writer.)
No. XI.—THE YOUNG GUARDSMAN.
The Young Guardsman believes himself to be not only the backbone of the British Army, its vital centre and support, but also its decorative master-piece. Other officers, of whom the Guardsman is wont to speak with a vague pity as belonging to "some line regiment," are not apt to sympathise with him in this exalted estimate of his military position and functions. They are accustomed to urge, that he is to the general body of officers as gold lace is to the uniform he wears, a gaudy ornament fashioned for show and useless for the practical work of the military profession. Doubtless "these are the forgeries of jealousy," or, if true at all, they are true only for that limited period of the Guardsman's existence, during which he pays more attention to his own dressing than to that of his men, and imagines that the serious objects of life are attained when he has raised the height of his collar by half an inch, or invented a new fashion of transfixing a silk scarf with a diamond pin. In fact it is during the first flush of his youth that he displays those characteristics which have specialised the Guardsman amongst the golden lads who afterwards come to the dust of middle-age and a colonelcy.
It is by no means necessary that the Young Guardsman should enjoy an aristocratic parentage, provided it be a wealthy one; nor is it essential that he should have made his mark at school as a scholar, an athlete, or a social success. Indeed, nothing is more common than to hear a former school-fellow express himself in terms of derisive amazement when he is informed that So-and-So is now in the Guards. "What, that scug?" he will observe with immeasurable contempt, and will proceed to express his surprise how one who neither played cricket, nor football, nor rowed to any purpose can possibly add distinction to Her Majesty's Brigade of Guards. These observations, it should be said, however disrespectful they may be towards a particular individual, undoubtedly show a strong feeling of veneration for the repute of the Guards in general. It must be added too that on his side the Young Guardsman is not slow to repay, and in doing so to aggravate, the contempt of the burly athlete who may have kicked him at school, and towards whom he now assumes a lordly air of irritating patronage hardly endurable, but not easily to be resented, by one who feels it to be totally unwarranted.
The Guardsman, then, will have passed through school without emerging in any way from the common ruck of ordinary boys. He will have left at a comparatively early age in order that his education may no longer be neglected, and will have betaken himself to the fostering care of one of the numerous establishments which exist to prove that the private coach Codlin is superior to the public school Short. Hence, if his abilities are exceptionally brilliant, he will have passed into Sandhurst. Failing this, however, the Militia is a refuge and a stepping-stone. In any case he will find himself in due time the owner of Her Majesty's Commission and the largest head-dress in the British Army. In short he will become a Guardsman in full bloom.