"A seniority service, like that of the Company, is all very well for poor men; better still for fools, for they must rise equally with wise men; but for maintaining the discipline and efficiency of the army in time of peace, and hurling it on the enemy in war, there never was a system which carried so many evils on its front and face."
His fast friend, Sir Henry Lawrence, again intervenes, and he is appointed an Assistant Commissioner, leaving the Guides for a time. In this capacity, in April, 1850, he comes across the new Commander-in-Chief:—
"I have just spent three days in Sir Charles Napier's camp, it being my duty to accompany him through such parts of the civil district as he may have occasion to visit. He was most kind and cordial; vastly amusing and interesting, and gave me even a higher opinion of him than before. To be sure, his language and mode of expressing himself savor more of the last than of this century—of the camp than of the court; but barring these eccentricities, he is a wonderful man; his heart is as thoroughly in his work, and he takes as high a tone in all that concerns it, as Arnold did in his; that is to say, the highest the subject is capable of. I only trust he will remain with us as long as his health lasts, and endeavor to rouse the army from the state of slack discipline into which it has fallen. On my parting with him he said, 'Now, remember, Hodson, if there is any way in which I can be of use to you, pray don't scruple to write to me.'"
After working in the Civil Service, chiefly in the Cis-Sutlej Provinces, for nearly two years, under Mr. Edmonstone, he is promoted to the command of the Guides on Lumsden's return to England. The wild frontier district of Euzofzai is handed over to him, where
"I am military as well as civil chief; and the natural taste of the Euzofzai Pathans for broken heads, murder, and violence, as well as their litigiousness about their lands, keeps me very hard at work from day to day."
Here he settles with his newly married wife, "the most fortunate man in the service; and have I not a right to call myself the happiest also, with such a wife and such a home?"
For nearly three years he rules this province, building a large fort for his regiment, fighting all marauders from the hills, training his men in all ways, even to practising their own sports with them.
"William is very clever" his wife writes "at this," cutting an orange, placed on a bamboo, in two, at full speed, "rarely failing. He is grievously overworked; still his health is wonderfully good, and his spirits as wild as if he were a boy again. He is never so well pleased as when he has the baby in his arms."
Yes, the baby,—for now comes in a little episode of home and family, a gentle and bright gem in the rough setting of the soldier's life; and the tender and loving father and husband stands before us as vividly as the daring border-leader.
"You would so delight in her baby tricks," he writes to his father. "The young lady already begins to show a singularity of taste—refusing to go to the arms of any native women, and decidedly preferring the male population, some of whom are distinguished by her special favor. Her own orderly, save the mark, never tires of looking at her 'beautiful white fingers,' nor she of twisting them into his black beard,—an insult to an Oriental, which he bears with an equanimity equal to his fondness for her. The cunning fellows have begun to make use of her too, and when they want anything, ask the favor in the name of Lilli Bâbâ (they cannot manage 'Olivia' at all). They know the spell is potent."