316 NOVEMBER. 



what is the prospect ? Loose lives at home, hard 

 marches and fare abroad; death in some pestilent 

 Indian swamp, or in the regular wholesale carnage 

 of battle. 



Yet, probably, some of these self-same youths 

 shall tread the highways of England in various 

 characters and stages of their career. One shall 

 come upon you as the deserter. There he marches 

 sullenly along between two files of his fellow-soldiers 

 with shouldered muskets; instant death his fate if he 

 attempt to escape ; disgrace, corporal punishment, 

 death itself, perhaps, equally certain, if he do not. 

 He has found a soldier's life a weary one. He has 

 cast away his oath and his service, and sought in 

 manifold disguises, and in many a strange lurking- 

 place, concealment from pursuit : but he has been 

 dogged and detected ; and on he goes with a heart 

 full of sullen wrath and fearful apprehension. 



Behold another and a happier ! he is marching 

 homeward on his furlough. He has fought battles 

 and seen foreign lands since he left home, and he 

 now goes thither with an honest vanity to boast of 

 his sights seen and exploits done ; and to set on fire 

 a dozen young heads with a luckless ambition. Poor 

 fellow ! happy as he thinks himself, he is horribly 

 weary and way-worn, and longs, with a most earnest 

 longing, for the far-off town. 



A third shall come home some thirty years hence, 

 the old veteran; the hard, gray-headed, mutilated 

 remnant of a man, with one arm, one leg, a body 

 seamed with scars, a crown never the better for the 



