r some such commodity,
you are absolutely nothing, and might as well be at a ball with a cork leg,
or go deaf to the opera."

"Now, when I've told thus much, I leave you to guess what impression our
triumphal entry into the city produced. Instead of the admiring crowds
that awaited us elsewhere, as we marched gayly into quarters, here we saw
nothing but grave, sober-looking, and, I confess it, intelligent-looking
faces, that scrutinized our appearance closely enough, but evidently with
no great approval and less enthusiasm. The men passed on hurriedly to the
counting-houses and wharves; the women, with almost as little interest,
peeped at us from the windows, and walked away again. Oh, how we wished for
Galway, glorious Galway, that paradise of the infantry that lies west of
the Shannon! Little we knew, as we ordered the band, in lively anticipation
of the gayeties before us, to strike up 'Payne's first set,' that, to the
ears of the fair listeners in Ship Quay Street, the rumble of a sugar
hogshead or the crank of a weighing crane were more delightful music."

"By Jove!" interrupted Power, "you are quite right. Women are strongly
imitative in their tastes. The lovely Italian, whose very costume is a
natural following of a Raphael, is no more like the pretty Liverpool damsel
than Genoa is to Glasnevin; and yet what the deuce have they, dear souls,
with their feet upon a soft carpet and their eyes upon the pages of Scott
or Byron, to do with all the cotton or dimity that ever was printed? But
let us not repine; that very plastic character is our greatest blessing."

"I'm not so sure that it always exists," said the doctor, dubiously, as
though his own experience pointed otherwise.

"Well, go ahead!" said the skipper, who evidently disliked the digression
thus interrupting the adjutant's story.

"Well, we marched along, looking right and left at the pretty faces--and
there were plenty of them, too--that a momentary curiosity drew to the
windows; but although we smiled and ogled and leered as only a newly
arrived regiment can smile, ogle, or leer, by all that's provoking we might
as well have wasted our blandishments upon the Presbyterian meeting-house,
that frowned upon us with its high-pitched roof and round windows.

"'Droll people, these,' said one; 'Rayther rum ones,' cried another; 'The
black north, by Jove!' said a third: and so we went along to the barracks,
somewhat displeased to think that, though the 18th we