18 The Major and Myself. [JAN. 



The Major was a tall, loosely-arranged man, with a figure susceptible 

 of every variety of movement and contortion. His face was like the 

 ingenious apex of a carved walking-stick ; his arms, like grappling-irons. 

 Then his legs seemed attached to his body by way of special favour 

 extra appendages, borrowed " by the hour ;" and the feet belonging to 

 these legs looked like continuations of the same at right angles, or as 

 though Nature had doubled them down, to mark where she had left 

 off. Ladies would have called him an ordinary- others thought him an 

 extraordinary man. 



Now the Major was a vast favourite with the ladies ; and I do not 

 wonder at it. He was a very Chevalier Bayard of the drawing-room 

 the perfect type of chivalrous devotion. His bow was literally the ne 

 plus ultra of flexibility of manners. He was evidently bent upon making 

 " both ends meet " like a pinched annuitant upon the verge of Can- 

 dlemas. For elegant flattery, tact, liveliness, anecdote, humour, and 

 untiring perseverance, there was no one like him. For an eye, a sigh, 

 a squeeze of the hand, or an appeal to the heart, I never heard of his 

 equal. Perhaps I bear some resemblance to him in these matters. 



Then could he dance immensely ! Once put in motion, so astonishing 

 was his vigour in that exercise, that you would have sworn there must 

 be, not one, but many Majors a legion in all parts of the room. In 

 song, also, he was accounted great, though I have heard some who 

 denied the purity of his taste. His voice was a bass and soprano at 

 loggerheads alternate roar and falsetto ; now rumbling and tumbling 

 helter-skelter down the scale ; and anon leaping over the diapason, and 

 turning sharp corners of sound (if I may use the expression) in the most 

 delightful manner conceivable. Withal, he was a perfect gentleman. 



The Major had been many years in India, from whence he returned 

 touched slightly in the liver. It was far from delightful to hear, therefore, 

 that his regiment was ordered off to Gibraltar shortly after his return. 

 He found himself unable to coincide in this arrangement. " What !" he 

 thundered, " chained to a rock, with the liver complaint like that old 

 pestilent ninny, Prometheus not to be thought of!" And so he 

 exchanged into another regiment, congratulating himself upon his pru- 

 dence, and repeating the above pleasantry as an evidence of it. Classical, 

 I admit, but hardly conclusive more especially as the exchange was any 

 thing but advantageous. 



Being at college, I oft received intimations of the Major's health and 

 proceedings from his own hand, some of which were of a peculiarly 

 strange import ; but I was not a little surprised, one morning, to receive 

 an effusion, which instructed me that he (the Major) was contracted in 

 marriage to a lady who this fatal manuscript assured me was violently 

 prejudiced against nay, who denounced me, as a worthless abettor and 

 encourager of his faults, which she was about to eradicate. I was advised 

 to pursue diligently my studies, and not to attempt, under pain of frus- 

 tration, to thrust myself into their domestic tranquillity. The conclusion 

 spake of a cessation of cash payments. 



This effusion operated like a gemini of new-sprung spectres upon my 

 nerves. As my eye reeled upon each successive word, the air became 

 thick and clogged. I screwed the letter painfully up into my clammy 

 palm ; my respiration quickened in an irrational ratio, till at length it 

 gave birth to a clamorous complaining scream, which lasted during the 

 remainder of the intelligence. It was too evident, as I knew, by the 



