ion, proceed to investigate another British
institution,--the undaunted English army, in its development in Fort
Wellington. A wall shuts the world out from those sacred premises; a
stile lets the world in,--over which stile we step and stand on the
fort grounds. A party of soldiers are making good cheer in a corner of
the pasture,--perhaps I ought to say parade-ground. As no sentinel
accosts us, we hunt up one, and inquire if the fort is accessible. He
does not know, but inclines to the opinion that it is. We go up the
hill, walk round the wall, and mark well her bulwarks, till we come to
a great gate, but it refuses to turn. The walls are too high to scale,
besides possible pickets on the other side. I have no doubt in the
world that we could creep under, for the gate has shrunk since it was
made, and needs to have a tuck let down; but what would become of
dignity? Grande and the Anakim make a reconnaissance in force, to see
if some unwary postern-gate may not permit entrance. Halicarnassus
fumbles in his pockets for edge-tools, as if Queen Victoria, who rules
the waves, on whose dominions the sun never sets, whose morning
drum-beat encircles the world, would leave the main gate of her main
fort on one of the frontiers of her empire so insecurely defended that
a single American can carry it with his fruit-knife. Such ideas I
energetically enforce, till I am cut short by the slow retrogression of
the massive gate on ponderous hinges turning.

"What about the fruit-knife?" inquires Halicarnassus as I pass in. The
reconnoitering party return to report a bootless search, and are
electrified to find the victory already gained.

"See the good of having been through college," exults Halicarnassus.

"How did you do it?" asks Grande, admiringly.

"By genius and assiduity," answers Halicarnassus.

"And lifting the latch," I append, for I have been examining the
mechanism of the gate since I came in, and have made a discovery which
dislodges my savant from his pinnacle; namely, that the only fastening
on the gate is a huge wooden latch, which not one of us had sense
enough to lift; but then who thinks of taking a fort by assault and
battery on the latch? Halicarnassus hit upon it by mere accident, and I
therefore remorselessly expose him. Then we saunter about the place,
and, seeing a woman eying us suspiciously from an elevated window, we
show the white feather and ask her if we may come in, which, seeing we
ha