"
Well, it is a wonder so many great men can be warm-clothed,
bedded-down, and well stalled there, ain't it? But they are, and very
comfortably, too. This is the upper crust; now the under crust
consists of lawyers, doctors, merchants, army and navy folks, small
officials, articled clerks, and so on. Well, in course such a town, I
beg pardon, it is a city (which is more than Liverpool in England is),
and has two cathedral churches, with so many grades, trades, blades,
and pretty maids in it, the talk must be various. The military talk is
professional, with tender reminiscences of home, and some little
boasting, that they are suffering in their country's cause by being so
long on foreign service at Halifax. The young swordknots that have
just joined are brim full of ardour, and swear by Jove (the young
heathens) it is too bad to be shut up in this vile hole (youngsters,
take my advice, and don't let the town's-people hear that, or they
will lynch you), instead of going to Constantinople.
"I say, Lennox, wouldn't that be jolly work?"
"Great work," says Lennox, "rum coves those Turks must be in the
field, eh? The colonel is up to a thing or two; if he was knocked on
the head, there would be such promotion, no one would lament him, but
his dear wife and five lovely daughters, and they would be really
distressed to lose him."
He don't check the youthful ardour, on the contrary, chimes in, and is
in hopes he can make interest at the Horse-guards for the regiment to
go yet, and then he gives a wink to the doctor, who was in the corps
when he was a boy, as much as to say, "Old fellow, you and I have seen
enough of the pleasures of campaigning in our day, eh! Doctor, that is
good wine; but it's getting confounded dear lately; I don't mind it
myself, but it makes the expense of the mess fall heavy upon the
youngsters.
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