A SOLDIER’S AGE.
Napoleon, in his Italian successes, took a Hungarian battalion prisoners. The colonel, an old man, complained bitterly of the French mode of fighting—by rapid and desultory attacks, on the flank, the rear, the lines of communication, &c., concluding by saying, “that he fought in the army of Maria Theresa.”
“You must be old?” said Napoleon.
“Yes, I am either sixty or seventy.”
“Why, colonel, you have certainly lived long enough to know how to count years a little more closely?”
“General,” said the Hungarian, “I reckon my money, my shirts, and my horses; but as for my years, I know that nobody will want to steal them, and that I shall never lose one of them!”