al,
and insignificant circumstances our lot in life seems to be cast; I mean
especially as regards the fair sex. You are prospering, as it were, to-day;
to-morrow a new cut of your whiskers, a novel tie of your cravat, mars your
destiny and spoils your future, _varium et mutabile_, as Horace has it.
On the other hand, some equally slight circumstance will do what all your
ingenuity may have failed to effect. I knew a fellow who married the
greatest fortune in Bath, from the mere habit he had of squeezing one's
hand. The lady in question thought it particular, looked conscious, and all
that; he followed up the blow; and, in a word, they were married in a week.
So a friend of mine, who could not help winking his left eye, once opened
a flirtation with a lively widow which cost him a special license and a
settlement. In fact you are never safe. They are like the guerillas, and
they pick you off when you least expect it, and when you think there is
nothing to fear. Therefore, as young fellows beginning life, I would
caution you. On this head you can never be too circumspect. Do you know, I
was once nearly caught by so slight a habit as sitting thus, with my legs
across."

Here the major rested his right foot on his left knee, in illustration, and
continued:--

"We were quartered in Jamaica. I had not long joined, and was about as raw
a young gentleman as you could see; the only very clear ideas in my head
being that we were monstrous fine fellows in the 50th, and that the
planters' daughters were deplorably in love with us. Not that I was much
wrong on either side. For brandy-and-water, sangaree, Manilla cigars, and
the ladies of color, I'd have backed the corps against the service.
Proof was, of eighteen only two ever left the island; for what with the
seductions of the coffee plantations, the sugar canes, the new rum, the
brown skins, the rainy season, and the yellow fever, most of us settled
there."

"It's very hard to leave the West Indies if once you've been quartered
there."

"So I have heard," said Power.

"In time, if you don't knock under to the climate, you become soon totally
unfit for living anywhere else. Preserved ginger, yams, flannel jackets,
and grog won't bear exportation; and the free-and-easy chuck under the
chin, cherishing, waist-pressing kind of way we get with the ladies would
be quite misunderstood in less favored regions, and lead to very unpleasant
consequences."

"It is a curious fact how