548 The United Service Smoke-shop : a Winter Sketch. [MAY,- 



all its expensive apparatus, to Portugal ; and Parliament was told that 

 all the Peninsular accounts would be audited on the spot. 



Vino. Such was the story, major ; and, like other Lisbon stories of the 

 same period, was swallowed : a residence in that delightful climate was 

 found convenient for more parties than one. Mr. Dogberry (the chief) 

 established himself in the cooling bowers of Cintra, whence he issued his 

 mandates. Accountants were summoned from the east and from the 

 west ; from the Mauritius and the Cape ; from Canada ; from England, 

 France, and the Netherlands, to attend his high court for examination, 

 explanation, and implication ! 



Li. Col Towlter. Well ; and what came out of it, after all? 



Vino. Why, it all ended in failure, to be sure; and. the whole of the 

 Peninsular accounts (jumbled together in as much confusion as a clubb'd 

 battalion) were bundled off to the audit board, at Somerset House ; on 

 whose shelves some of them may probably repose in dusty silence for 

 the next twenty years. 



Major Claymore. But I thought that the duke, and his gallant little 

 second, Sir Henry, had fairly laid their shoulders to the wheel, in the 

 business of dispatch and retrenchment, and that there was no such thing 

 now-a-days as fi accounts in arrear." 



Vino. Yes ; as far as the dismissal of some scores of poor clerks (the 

 slaves of former years) went, this zeal for retrenchment has indeed been 

 conspicuous ; but all the fat offices remained untouched. 



Lt. Col. Towlter. Much of a piece with that pitiful parsimony, which 

 reduced the means of transport for the accommodation of the officers of 

 the line, during the years 1812, 1813, arid 1814, to one mule per com- 

 pany, while the generals had from forty to fifty each. By the by, Mr. 

 Vino, you gentlemen of the commissariat took pretty good care of your- 

 selves in the distribution of quadrupeds ; no, there was no arguing your 

 plea of the necessity of security for the public documents : on one occa- 

 sion, I remember seeing a box of these documents overthrown on our line 

 of march, when out rolled a Stilton cheese in its leaden jacket, escorted 

 by a pickled tongue ; which (had it the faculty of speech) might have 

 told a tale of many other niceties of a documentary character contained in 

 the box. 



Omnes. Ha, ha, ha ! 



Vino. {More than usually pompous.) Give me leave to say, colonel, 

 that the circumstance you mention did not occur with my division. 



Lt. Col. Towlter. Indeed, it did not ; and sorry we were for it, my 

 friend ; for in that case, our little mess might have reckoned on a slice 

 of your well-secured Stilton, and a cut of your cherry-coloured lingua. 



Capt. Cleverly. For that matter, colonel, there were other depart- 

 ments of the army which shared equally well with the commissariat. 

 We poor mousers, the infantry of the line, had always the hardest work 

 and the least comfort. On the retreat from Burgos, when our wounded 

 and sick were lying by hundreds on the roadside in a dying state ; 

 when all our personal comforts were cheerfully abandoned, in order to 

 afford some accommodation for our perishing comrades ; when our com- 

 pany mules might be seen tottering up to the knees in mud, laden with 

 two, sometimes three disabled soldiers on the back of each ; we were 

 compelled to " open column to the right and left," to afford a passage 

 to the personal cart (as it was called), and a string of sumpter mules 

 of some of the great ones. 



