Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

them monthly. Keep also your own accounts, and never omit to put down every fraction you receive or pay; this will be a very great help to your keeping within your income. Few people will believe that the trifling sums they expend daily, can possibly amount to the large total they find themselves minus of, at the end of a month.

Some of your letters of introduction may be the means of your obtaining an invitation to remain with a friend during your stay in Calcutta ; this will not release you from subjection to military authority, and you must therefore occasionally call at the Superintendent's office for orders.

Here, let me say a word or two on the subject of subordination.-The young revel in the idea of "freedom." They imagine their school-days as prison-bars, which, once escaped, places them on the wide field of liberty,—they are to act and judge for themselves; and so completely does it possess the mind, that they are unwilling to conceive the necessity of restraint or self-control. But we must, in every station of life, endure the yoke,—we must submit our wills, more or less, to the wills of others. In military life more particularly, obedience is the primary essential. will, no doubt, meet with many disagreeable and trying circumstances, where your inclinations and wishes are at variance with the rules and regulations of the service, or the orders of your superiors; but make it a point always, in the first

You

instance, to obey unhesitatingly, afterwards remonstrate respectfully, should you deem yourself oppressed or injured and be very careful, even then, how you question the right of your superior to give the order. If it is one that merely affects your own private convenience, and evidently issued for the purpose of annoying you, or you fancy the motive to have been such, you had better let it pass without a remark; but if it affects the interest of others, and if a majority of your brother-officers deem a remonstrance justifiable, do not fear to do so, in a temperate official communication through the regular channel (the Adjutant) to your commanding-officer, and if he still persists in continuing the oppression, request him through the same channel to submit the correspondence to the Commander-inchief. But think well before you commit yourself to paper. In every act of importance give the subject most serious, cool, and unprejudiced consideration, and take the opinion of another whose judgment you can rely on. Many a man has, in the heat of the moment, said or written things, which on reflection, he would give worlds to recal, but in vain,—therefore, you cannot be too guarded either in uttering, or in expressing on paper your thoughts during a state of excitement. Allowance will seldom be made for irritated feelings; a soldier, in particular, cannot too early commence the study of curbing them, and, al

though it may cost you many a sacrifice, once obtain the mastery, you will have gained a victory of which you have more reason to be proud, than the greatest you can ever achieve in the field of battle. The man who can command himself has one most powerful argument in favor of his being qualified to command others.

Having remained at the Presidency a few weeks, you will be ordered to do duty with a regiment; you cannot be permanently posted to one, until the date of your rank arrives from England. If you have had your wits about you, you will have picked up during these few weeks much valuable information respecting the nature of the country, the peculiar wants incident to your travelling through it, and upon other material points, which the limits of this little work prevent me from enumerating in detail, but which I should be happy to communicate on a personal reference. If in Bengal, your destination is generally arrived at by water conveyance. A detachment of cadets is placed under the command of some officer, who having been on leave of absence, is about to join his regiment; two or three hire a budgerow and a cook-boat together, and lay in sufficient stores for a voyage of three or four months. Since my time, however, I hear this mode of travelling is superseded by the steamers which now ply on the Ganges,-making the trip in twenty days, which, by the old mode, took

three or four months. At Madras and Bombay, it will be necessary for you to get your campequipage previous to your leaving the Presidency; and, whatever others may say, let me advise you always to have this complete and efficient, so that, at any moment, wherever you may be ordered, you are as a soldier should be, ready, and not under the necessity of borrowing. Of what your camp-equipage should consist you will learn better on the spot than I can tell you; but a subaltern should never have more than is absolutely necessary, unless his private means are equal to the expense of luxuries. Your pay is sufficient for your current expenses, and, depend upon it, if you once allow them to exceed your income, you will most bitterly repent it. Nothing, except loss of character, ever weighs down the spirits like debt. It haunts the soul day and night. All the efforts of denying yourself the luxuries, or even the comforts of life, are light in comparison with the burden of debt. It shackles and destroys the mind,-it lays a burden of dependence and obligation on the noble spirit more painful than can be expressed, it shakes that confidence which is so delightful to an honest heart,-in fact it utterly annihilates every feeling of pleasure, and too frequently leads to the commission of ungentlemanly acts, if not to positive crime. You cannot too studiously avoid this appalling evil. Do not be led away with the idea that at a future

day you can easily spare the sum required, it is a fallacy which will plunge you into ruin; unless you can pay at once for the things you wish to purchase, rather suffer any privation, any annoyance, any ridicule, than be tempted to get into debt for it; the time for payment must come, (it is astonishing how a debtor's time flies,) and when it arrives, and the pleasure derived from the purchase flown, how bitter the remembrance of the folly, none can tell but those who have experienced the utter misery of such self-reproach. I have felt, and witnessed in others, such distressing scenes from this cause, that I cannot too strongly urge you to avoid so dangerous a rock in the sea of life; and believe me, for one who strikes upon it and escapes, there are hundreds who are shipwrecked and lost for ever.

A tent, a table, camp-stool, a bedstead with an arched cover of oil-cloth, four bullock-trunks, a couple of pettarahs or basket-boxes, with a canteen and a brass wash-hand basin, and a small collection of well-chosen books, should constitute the greater part of your baggage. The tents should be light enough for two camels-two bullocks will be needed for the trunks, and a couple of bearers who carry the pettarahs slung on each end of a bamboo, across their shoulders, and three or four Coolies to carry your cooking apparatus in baskets on their heads. All young officers, on first joining their regiments, are allowed a certain

« AnteriorContinua »