WESTERN CATTLE LANDS. 333 



for all we know, the Benjamin of some Belgravian household, 

 who has only left home because his courageous attempts to 

 keep pace with his eldest brother have no longer found the 

 cordial support of the paternal purse, and with whom a com- 

 promise has eventually been effected on the terms of five 

 thousand pounds and his journey paid to the Western States of 

 America. Hitherto his associates have been of no more mixed 

 description than the ballot-box would admit into the best clubs 

 in London, S.W. ; while, to make the road of life travel smooth, 

 the most respectful of menials — whether in the pay of his 

 parent, his club, or, in the minor instances of valet and perhaps 

 groom and second horseman, of himself — have taken all trouble 

 off his hands, leaving him full leisure to digest the bread of 

 idleness in society the most merry but refined. (Alas, will he 

 not chew the cud of bitterness when realising, in the company 

 of the godless, a full demonstration of the great truism, God 

 made all men alike ?) 



Or he may be a warrior from the proudest, but by no means 

 the best paid, army in the world ; one who, having served her 

 Majesty faithfully in many climes, but in all cases amid the 

 substantial luxuries of regimental life, has now realised his 

 retirement pittance, and, in lieu of the pomp of war and jovial 

 circumstance of military peace, has, so to speak, turned his 

 sword into a branding-iron. By this means he intends to eke 

 out his maturity in a manner of life more vigorous and befittin<>- 

 than that which he sees adopted by so many of his comrades in 

 arms, and the sphere of which is limited by Pall Mall on the 

 one side and Piccadilly on the other, with Duke Street as a 

 centre. In lieu of this placid, not to say monotonous, vista, he 

 pictures to himself years of sturdy health and prosperity, to be 

 followed by an old age of positive affluence. His four decades 

 of life have left him with a constitution still tolerably un- 

 impaired in spite of hot climates and " festive evenings " — such 

 as only a well-conducted regimental mess can offer in perfection. 

 In accepting the provision made by Her Majesty's councillors 

 for his retirement to facilitate the promotion of his juniors, he 



