CAKROTS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES. 607 



" Twas green, 'twas green, sir, I assure ye !" 



The glass fell from my hand ; it was dashed into a million of shivers: 

 its fate was unheeded, for I was unconscious of passing events : the 

 shock was too fresh, and I fainted. 



****** 



For several weeks my existence \t as a blank ; for dim visions alone 

 flit across my recollection: they were the dreams of a maniac, and must 

 pass unrecorded, When I returned to consciousness, I found myself an 

 invalid in my barrack-room, in the garrison of in North Ame- 



rica. I there discovered that the surgeon, in mercy, or from necessity, 

 for " they tell me I did wildly rave," had caused my locks to be 

 shorn ; that, with their growth, I might arise a second Sampson. I did 

 so, but my hair was redder than before ! 



When I began to write these pages, it was my intention to have re- 

 corded all the sufferings I have undergone ; but I find the task of such 

 minute detail too painful. What boots it to narrate how I was crossed 

 in all my schemes of interest, of ambition, and of love? how I was 

 thrice rejected for staff situations, to which the letters of my friends in 

 England had recommended me, because the governor's lady objected to 

 a red-headed aid-de-camp : how, consequently, I sought and obtained 

 the command of a remote detachment, and buried myself amid the 

 woods far up the country ; and how a party of freebooting Indians, from 

 the banks of the Passamaquoddy, endeavoured to ensnare me, and secure 

 my scalp to decorate the wigwam of their chieftain. These, and a 

 thousand other events, which now pass unrecorded, combined to drive 

 me from the country, and relinquish the profession of arms. I resolved 

 to retire from the army; and accordingly making arrangements for the 

 sale of my commission, I returned to England, debating in my own 

 mind whether I should hide my shame " where, in what desolate 

 place?" under the powdered wig of a barrister, or concealed beneath 

 the turban of a Moslem. The former I considered only a partial remedy ; 

 the latter more complete, and quite as respectable ; for I hold the doc- 

 trines of the Koran to be fully as orthodox as the precepts of Grotius 

 and Puflfendorf. Whilst I hesitated as to which of the two I should 

 adopt, whether a few months should see me under the guidance of a 

 Moollah, or a student in chambers, I chanced to take up the work 

 recently written on Spain, by a young American. From this I gathered, 

 that even for me there was " balm in Gilead," that, abandoned and 

 proscribed, as I had hitherto found myself, there was yet a quarter of 

 the globe where red heads are at a premium; that happiness might yet 

 be mine, in the sunny clime of Iberia. Away, then, with wigs and 

 turbans ! To-morrow I start for Paris, a few days will see me at Bay- 

 onne, and once across the Spanish frontier, on the plains of Castile, or 

 amid the Sierras of Grenada, I shall find myself at length an emanci- 

 pated being, and exclaim with the poet, 



" Oh, life ! at last I feel thee !" 



: 



