id me of burdens that make me feel like a robber
and impostor.'

Everard replied:

'I have a letter from your captain, informing me that I am unlikely to
see you home unless you learn to hold yourself in. I wish you were in
another battery than Robert Hall's. He forgets the force of example,
however much of a dab he may be at precept. But there you are, and please
clap a hundredweight on your appetite for figuring, will you. Do you
think there is any good in helping to Frenchify our army? I loathe a
fellow who shoots at a medal. I wager he is easy enough to be caught by
circumvention--put me in the open with him. Tom Biggot, the boxer, went
over to Paris, and stood in the ring with one of their dancing pugilists,
and the first round he got a crack on the chin from the rogue's foot; the
second round he caught him by the lifted leg, and punished him till pec
was all he could say of peccavi. Fight the straightforward fight. Hang
flan! Battle is a game of give and take, and if our men get elanned, we
shall see them refusing to come up to time. This new crossing and
medalling is the devil's own notion for upsetting a solid British line,
and tempting fellows to get invalided that they may blaze it before the
shopkeepers and their wives in the city. Give us an army!--none of your
caperers. Here are lots of circusy heroes coming home to rest after their
fatigues. One was spouting at a public dinner yesterday night. He went
into it upright, and he ran out of it upright--at the head of his
men!--and here he is feasted by the citizens and making a speech upright,
and my boy fronting the enemy!'

Everard's involuntary break-down from his veteran's roughness to a touch
of feeling thrilled Nevil, who began to perceive what his uncle was
driving at when he rebuked the coxcombry of the field, and spoke of the
description of compliment your hero was paying Englishmen in affecting to
give them examples of bravery and preternatural coolness. Nevil sent home
humble confessions of guilt in this respect, with fresh praises of young
Michell: for though Everard, as Nevil recognized it, was perfectly right
in the abstract, and generally right, there are times when an example is
needed by brave men--times when the fiery furnace of death's dragon-jaw
is not inviting even to Englishmen receiving the word that duty bids them
advance, and they require a leader of the way. A national coxcombry that
pretends to an independence of human sensations, a