78 Among Men and Horses. 



up an extremely small amount of fortification, military topo- 

 graphy, military law and tactics, none of which, as far as 

 militia subalterns are concerned, requires any knowledge of 

 literature, art or science. It is needless to say that neither 

 the militia nor the country obtains any good by these army 

 candidates being obliged to obtain commissions in the militia 

 before they are eligible to compete for commissions in the 

 army. It, however, limits that form of army competition to 

 the sons of comparatively rich men, who can afford to pay 

 for uniform, and for the expenses of the necessary number 

 of ' trainings.' 



Mr Pritchard, I must add, made his young men comfort- 

 able, and did his best to induce them to ' pass.' I remained 

 with him some months, and then went to resume my veter- 

 inary studies at Edinburgh. In order to pay my way, I 

 continued to ' coach ' militia subalterns, and was very suc- 

 cessful in getting them to pass. They liked me and I was 

 fond of them. I tried to manoeuvre them in the same way 

 that Tom Cannon would handle a wayward two-year which 

 had been spoiled in its breaking in ; for they were almost all 

 rank jibbers at book work. I kept on cramming for about 

 three years, during which time I took out my veterinary 

 diploma. At last that unfortunate propensity of writing 

 books again seized hold of me, and I produced The Student's 

 Manual of Tactics. It happened in this wise. Militia sub- 

 alterns had got into such a habit of learning the official 

 manual of tactics by heart, and then answering the questions 

 they were set, by verbatim extracts from it, that although the 

 examiners had to confine the contents of their papers to the 

 subjects treated on in the official books, they would give but 

 little credit for this mechanical method of answering. It 

 being hopeless to expect that the dear boys would read up 

 the literature of the subject ; I did that for them, and com- 

 piled a work from which they could obtain all the informa- 

 tion they required. I may mention that TJie Times and other 

 papers said a lot of nice things about my new literary depart- 



