1828.] [ 17 ] 



THE MAJOR AND MYSELF. 



" Life is illusion : else my heart had home 

 The feelings at tin* moment, which it bore 

 In youth's warm uooa." ANON. 



As I have nothing better to do, it is clear that I cannot do better than 

 get rid of a few melancholy hours, by a fond recollection of past events ; 

 wherein I have (it has so happened) been a chief feature. In these 

 recollections, I find a great deal to congratulate myself upon, but very 

 little for which I can, with any consistency, affect gratitude. My vices 

 have been, and are, not worth mentioning ; my virtues I do not care to 

 speak about. It is well said, " Virtue is its own reward ;" but it is not 

 well that it should be so. 



I was, it has been told me, an extraordinary child ; giving early indi- 

 cations of a wonderful precocity of intellect and fertility of imagination, 

 which soon discovered itself in harmless and pleasant conceits of shifting 

 facts occasionally, but innocently, from my own proper shoulders to the 

 backs of others. How soon did I scout, nay, utterly contemn, those 

 absurd chronicles of the nursery, narrated by its venerable occupant ! 

 how soon set at nought the rule of that garrulous woman ! Nor did my 

 youth belie the promise of my infancy. Suffice it, that to the prodigality 

 of nature was superadded the liberal endowment of art. 



And here I cannot but suspect that many of my qualifications have 

 rather tended to pluck me back in my progress through the world. Thus, 

 my knowledge of billiards was not very cheaply purchased, by being 

 compelled to place into thorough repair the ruined limbs of a helpless 

 marker, whom I casually cast out of the window. 



My advancement in the science of fencing was sullied, if not retarded, 

 by a silly accident. I chanced, inadvertently, to dig out with my foil 

 the sinister orb that figured in the countenance of my gigantic friend, 

 Lieutenant Jacks an orb, I was afterwards apprized, never failing at an 

 ogle fatal in point-blank encounter. Alas ! Lieutenant Jacks was never 

 after held in any account by the ladies, who looked upon him with as 

 much indifference as upon that domestic Polyphemus a bodkin. 



My skill in swimming ofttimes seduced me to the treacherous deep. 

 Caught by the leg, as in a vice, by a cramp-tortured tyro, I have been 

 fain to 



" Visit the bottom of the monstrous world/' 



toe in digit, and have been grateful, indeed, to emerge by hook or by 

 crook of the Humane Society. Drowning persons do not " catch at 

 straws," whatever some may affect to believe. 



The Major and I were, in all respects, precisely similar in taste, 

 habits, person exactly alike. The Major was that very man whom it 

 pleased Providence to allot to me for a maternal uncle ; and truly the 

 relationship was immediately discernible. But our intercourse was kept 

 up in a spirit of companionship and equality, which something scan- 

 dalized our friends. We were sworn brothers in all parties rivals in 

 love ; forever dining at the same table not unfrequently rolling toge- 

 ther under it. 



M.M. M*4M&-VoV. No. 25. D 



