100 MAJOR W. HODSON. 



than five years' standing. Conscious of his own 

 worth, as attested by the records, public and private, 

 of his recent services, he fell back, with a passing 

 grumble, upon the post he still held as second in 

 command of the Guides under the high - souled 

 Harry Lumsden. After instructing the new Com- 

 missioner in the details of the province, which he 

 himself had won from the rebels during the past 

 six months, he rejoined the Guides at Peshawar to 

 arrange with Lumsden the proposed additions to 

 the strength of that corps. 



" Now daily, morning and evening," he writes in 

 June, " I may be seen standing on one leg to con- 

 vince their Afghan mind of the plausibility and 

 elegance of the goose-step. I am quite a sergeant- 

 major just now, and you will well believe that 

 your wandering brother is sufficiently cosmopolised to 

 drop with a certain aj^lomh into any line of life which 

 may turn up in the course of his career. I was 

 always fond of ' soldiering,' and there is a species 

 of absurdity in dropping from the minister of a 

 province into a drill-sergeant, which is enlivening." 



Meanwhile Hodson, as he tells his brother, had 

 " made some progress in the knowledge of men," 

 but found himself behindhand in that of books. 

 "We are sadly off," he writes, "for military works 

 in English, and few sciences require more study 

 than the art of war. You might get me a list of 

 good works from the United Service Institution at 

 Charing Cross. I want the best edition of Csesar 

 procurable ; also Xenophon and Arrian. I fancy 

 the last has been very well edited." In the matter 

 of reading he was certainly better off than most 

 of the many officers then quartered about the 



