rve! And what happened?
We were eaten up? That is necessarily what would have happened in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. But no; those Russians argued that
no single regiment would come browsing around there at such a time.
It must be the entire English army, and that the sly Russian game
was detected and blocked; so they turned tail, and away they went,
pell-mell, over the hill and down into the field, in wild confusion,
and we after them; they themselves broke the solid Russia centre in the
field, and tore through, and in no time there was the most tremendous
rout you ever saw, and the defeat of the allies was turned into a
sweeping and splendid victory! Marshal Canrobert looked on, dizzy with
astonishment, admiration, and delight; and sent right off for Scoresby,
and hugged him, and decorated him on the field in presence of all the
armies!

And what was Scoresby's blunder that time? Merely the mistaking his
right hand for his left--that was all. An order had come to him to fall
back and support our right; and instead he fell forward and went over
the hill to the left. But the name he won that day as a marvellous
military genius filled the world with his glory, and that glory will
never fade while history books last.

He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending as a man can
be, but he doesn't know enough to come in when it rains. He has
been pursued, day by day and year by year, by a most phenomenal and
astonishing luckiness. He has been a shining soldier in all our wars for
half a generation; he has littered his military life with blunders, and
yet has never committed one that didn't make him a knight or a baronet
or a lord or something. Look at his breast; why, he is just clothed
in domestic and foreign decorations. Well, sir, every one of them is a
record of some shouting stupidity or other; and, taken together, they
are proof that the very best thing in all this world that can befall a
man is to be born lucky.

THE CAPTAIN'S STORY

There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain 'Hurricane'
Jones, of the Pacific Ocean--peace to his ashes! Two or three of
us present had known him; I, particularly well, for I had made four
sea-voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. He was born on a
ship; he picked up what little education he had among his ship-mates;
he began life in the forecastle, and climbed grade by grade to the
captaincy. More than fifty years of his sixty