had entered the army or in what precise capacity, I never yet met
the man who could tell. There were traditionary accounts of his having
served in the East Indies and in Canada in times long past. His own
peculiar reminiscences extended to nearly every regiment in the service,
"horse, foot, and dragoons." There was not a clime he had not basked in;
not an engagement he had not witnessed. His memory, or, if you will, his
invention, was never at fault; and from the siege of Seringapatam to
the battle of Corunna he was perfect. Besides this, he possessed a mind
retentive of even the most trifling details of his profession,--from the
formation of a regiment to the introduction of a new button, from the
laying down of a parallel to the price of a camp-kettle, he knew it all. To
be sure, he had served in the commissary-general's department for a number
of years, and nothing instils such habits as this.

"The commissaries are to the army what the special pleaders are to the
bar," observed my friend Power,--"dry dogs, not over creditable on the
whole, but devilish useful."

The major had begun life a two-bottle man; but by a studious cultivation of
his natural gifts, and a steady determination to succeed, he had, at the
time I knew him, attained to his fifth. It need not be wondered at, then,
that his countenance bore some traces of his habits. It was of a deep
sunset-purple, which, becoming tropical, at the tip of the nose verged
almost upon a plum-color; his mouth was large, thick-lipped, and
good-humored; his voice rich, mellow, and racy, and contributed, with the
aid of a certain dry, chuckling laugh, greatly to increase the effect of
the stories which he was ever ready to recount; and as they most frequently
bore in some degree against some of what he called his little failings,
they were ever well received, no man being so popular with the world as he
who flatters its vanity at his own expense. To do this the major was ever
ready, but at no time more so than when the evening wore late, and the last
bottle of his series seemed to imply that any caution regarding the
nature of his communication was perfectly unnecessary. Indeed, from the
commencement of his evening to the close, he seemed to pass through a
number of mental changes, all in a manner preparing him for this final
consummation, when he confessed anything and everything; and so well
regulated had those stages become, that a friend dropping in upon him
suddenly c