3830.] The United Service timokc-shop a Winter Sketch. 



Lt. Col. Towlter. Bravo, Kil ! may you never have worse music at 

 your own wake, and may I never live to join in it ! 



Capt. Kilkenny. Major ! as iny friend Mac and Mr. Vino seem to 

 be tuning their pipes, suppose you allow me to call on them for a duet? 



Major Claymore. None more capable. Gentlemen, choose your own 

 time and air. 



\The PAYMASTER and the COMMISSARY sing the 



Duet. " Could a man be secure, &c. &c." 

 with great feeling and effect. ;] 



Lt. Col. Towlter. Mac, your notes are always sweet, and as for 

 Vino's, there's CORN, WINE, and OIL in them ! Well, I say, 



" Very good song and very well sung : 

 Jolly companions every one" 



Let's be merry while we may whether in our smoke-shop or in bivouac ; 

 let our hearts be as light as 



Capt. Kilkenny. Our pockets. 



' Lt. Col. Towlter. Exactly the devil could not bate you at a simile, 

 Joe but talking of pockets, who do you think I met to-day ? 



Capt Kilkenny. Many hundred, I dare say. 



Lt. Col. Towlter. Oh ! there's more of it ! Well, I met that prime 

 chanter. Jack Ramskin, in high feather ; he had touched the commuta- 

 tion bartered his fifteen years' service for seven hundred pounds, and is 

 about to take wing for the continent,, in hopes of picking up gome stray 

 ould bird with a lot of money. 



Capt. Cleverly. A bad spec, colonel ; better stay at home, and beat 

 the covers of Cheltenham, Leamington, and Bath ; Jack, at thirty-six, 

 looks fresher than most men at five -and- twenty in these days and, 

 besides, he is six feet high, and has a beard like a scrubbing-brush : 

 great qualifications in the eyes of ladies arrived at the age of gratitude. 



Capt. Kilkenny. Yes, but then Jack's seven hundred pounds would 

 scantily bear him through the season in this country ; while it would 

 last him nearly as many years abroad with management 



Lt. Col. Towlter. Not if there was a " rouge-et-noir" table in the 

 way : but why did he accept that commutation which appears to have 

 been framed to afford a convenient loop-hole for the retreat of men who 

 never saw a day's service ? 



Major Claymore.. My good MacTowlter, with all its disadvantages 

 to the old soldier and apparent partiality to those who neither earned by 

 service nor purchased the commissions which they are now permitted to 

 sell, the measure is a good one, and formed, I feel convinced, as much 

 for the convenience of the officer as the advantage of the state ; it had 

 the sanction of Him who justly gained the envied title of THE SOLDIER'S 

 FRIEND, and whose memory we must ever hold in grateful recollection. 



Lt. Col. Towlter. Major, you always floor me ; but it is an honour 

 to be knocked down by such a noble antagonist perhaps I am mistaken 

 in my opinions on many things but I have not been a lucky man, and 

 my naturally light spirits are sometimes overcast by a cloud. I wonder, 

 however, at Ramskin's retiring from the service for so paltry a considera- 

 tion as a few hundred pounds He did not want for interest surely with 

 one diplomatic uncle, and another a pro-Catholic bishop ? 



Capt. Cleverly. Neither of whom dares ssk a favour out of their own 



M. M. New Series. VOL. IX. No. 53. 4 B 



