There was never anything in the world more hopeless than the attempt to
teach Soolikan to ride. Of course he was never trusted in the _manege_;
but he tumbled about on the tan of the riding-school in an astonishing
manner, breaking no bones and incurring, somehow or other, no sort of
damage. Every morning the recruits led their horses into the school and
mounted there, and every morning old Barron addressed his _bete noire_
in the same words, 'Pick a soft place, Sullivan.' It was all very well
so long as the ride circled at a walk at the lower end of the school
But then came the order, 'Go large!' and shortly afterwards the long
drawling command, 'Tr-r-o-o-o-t!'

The horses, which were old stagers and knew the words of command far
better than their riders, started at the beginning of the note; and
before the call had well ended the brisk impressive 'Halt!' would snap
across it like a pistol-shot. 'Pick up Sullivan, somebody!' The luckless
man, after more than three months' lessons, came to me one morning in
triumph and told me with a broad grin, 'I didn't fall, off the day,' He
was recognised from the first as incorrigible, and when he had spent but
four months in the regiment he disappeared. It was darkly whispered
in the barrack-rooms that he had been told to go, and that he had been
bribed with a ten-pound note to desert the regiment. I dare not mention
names; but I think I could lay my hand on the gallant officer who went
to this expense for the credit of the corps.

I suppose the School Boards have done much within the last score of
years to minimise the mass of popular ignorance; but in '65 one
found here and there an amazing corner of mental darkness amongst the
rank-and-file of a dandy regiment like the Fourth. There was a great
hulking fellow named Gardiner, who was boasting one day that he could
carry twice his own weight He was told that he could not so much as lift
his own, and was persuaded into a two-handled hamper, in which he made
herculean efforts to lift himself. There was another man who received
with perfect gravity the chaffing statement of a comrade, to the effect
that he had shot a wood-pigeon at the North Pole, and that the bird had
fallen on the needle on the top of the Pole, and had frozen so hard that
it was impossible to remove it.

'Ye know the song,' said the humourist, "True as the needle to the
pole." There's no gettin' the needle out of the Pole, and now there's no
gettin' the pigeo