e shaking hands
with him. Allow me to expand a little. There are several things,
very slight in themselves, yet implying other things not so
unimportant. Thus, your French servant has devalise your premises
and got caught. Excusez, says the sergent-de-ville, as he politely
relieves him of his upper garments and displays his bust in the
full daylight. Good shoulders enough,--a little marked,--traces of
smallpox, perhaps,--but white. . . . . Crac! from the sergent-de-
ville's broad palm on the white shoulder! Now look! Vogue la
galere! Out comes the big red V--mark of the hot iron;--he had
blistered it out pretty nearly,--hadn't he?--the old rascal VOLEUR,
branded in the galleys at Marseilles! [Don't! What if he has got
something like this?--nobody supposes I INVENTED such a story.]

My man John, who used to drive two of those six equine females
which I told you I had owned,--for, look you, my friends, simple
though I stand here, I am one that has been driven in his
"kerridge,"--not using that term, as liberal shepherds do, for any
battered old shabby-genteel go-cart which has more than one wheel,
but meaning thereby a four-wheeled vehicle WITH A POLE,--my man
John, I say, was a retired soldier. He retired unostentatiously,
as many of Her Majesty's modest servants have done before and
since. John told me, that when an officer thinks he recognizes one
of these retiring heroes, and would know if he has really been in
the service, that he may restore him, if possible, to a grateful
country, he comes suddenly upon him, and says, sharply, "Strap!"
If he has ever worn the shoulder-strap, he has learned the
reprimand for its ill adjustment. The old word of command flashes
through his muscles, and his hand goes up in an instant to the
place where the strap used to be.

[I was all the time preparing for my grand coup, you understand;
but I saw they were not quite ready for it, and so continued,
--always in illustration of the general principle I had laid down.]

Yes, odd things come out in ways that nobody thinks of. There was
a legend, that, when the Danish pirates made descents upon the
English coast, they caught a few Tartars occasionally, in the shape
of Saxons, who would not let them go,--on the contrary, insisted on
their staying, and, to make sure of it, treated them as Apollo
treated Marsyas, or an Bartholinus has treated a fellow-creature in
his title-page, and, having divested them of the one essential