nt scene. I have been on
other scouts since then, and by various processes, but never with a zest
so novel as was afforded by that night's experience. The thing soon got
wind in the regiment, and led to only one ill consequence, so far as I
know. It rather suppressed a way I had of lecturing the officers on the
importance of reducing their personal baggage to a minimum. They got a
trick of congratulating me, very respectfully, on the thoroughness with
which I had once conformed my practice to my precepts.

* * * * *

ON A LATE VENDUE.

The red flag--not the red flag of the loathed and deadly pestilence that
has destroyed so many lives and disfigured so many fair and so many
manly countenances, but (in some circumstances) the scarcely less
ominous flag of the auctioneer--has been displayed from the handsome and
substantial red-brick house in Kensington-Place Gardens, London, in
which Thackeray lately lived, and in which he wrote the opening chapters
of his last and never-to-be-completed work, which we are all reading
with mingled pleasure and regret.

I rejoice to see the flags and pennants gracefully waving from the masts
of the outward or the inward bound ship; to see our beautiful national
ensign,--the ensign that is destined sooner or later, so all loyal and
patriotic men and women hope and believe, triumphantly to float over the
largest, the freest, the happiest, the most prosperous country in the
whole wide world,--to see the stars and stripes fluttering in the breeze
from the city flag-staff and the village liberty-pole; to see the
dancing banners and the fluttering pennons of a regiment of brave and
stalwart men marching in all the pride, pomp, and circumstance of war to
the defence of their country in this her hour of danger and of need. As
a child, I loved to see the colors of the holiday-soldiers flapping in
the wind and flaunting in the sun on "muster-day." Nay, was not an uncle
of mine (he is an old man now, and is fond of bragging of the brave days
of old, when he was a gay and gallant sunshine-soldier) the
standard-bearer of a once famous company of fair-weather soldiers?--dead
now, most of them, and their

"bones are dust,
And their good swords rust";

--and did not this daring and heroic uncle of mine, while bravely
upbearing his gorgeous silken banner (a gift of the beautiful and
all-accomplished ladies of Seaport) in a well-contested sham figh