MY UNCLE TOBY'S SIEGE OPERATIONS. and so heated was my uncle Toby's imagination with the accounts of them, that he had infallibly shot away all his estate. Something therefore was wanting as a succedaneum, especially in one or two of the more violent paroxysms of the siege, to keep up something like a continual firing in the imagination; and this something, the Corporal, whose principal strength lay in invention, supplied by an entirely new system of battering of his own, without which, this has been objected to by military critics, to the end of the world, as one of the great desiderata of my uncle Toby's apparatus. This will not be explained the worse for setting off, as I generally do, at a little distance from the subject. With two or three other trinkets, small in themselves, but of great regard, which poor Tom, the Corporal's unfortunate brother, had sent him over, with the account of his marriage with the Jew's widow, there was a Montero-cap and two Turkish tobacco-pipes. The Montero-cap I shall describe by-and-by. The Turkish tobacco-pipes had nothing particular in them; they were fitted up and ornamented as usual with flexible tubes of morocco leather and gold wire, and mounted at their ends, the one of them with ivory, the other with black ebony, tipped with silver. My father, who saw all things in lights different from the rest of the world, would say to the Corporal that he ought to look upon these two presents more as tokens of his brother's nicety than his affection. "Tom did not care, Trim," he would say, "to put on the cap, or to smoke in the tobacco-pipe of a Jew." 86 Bless your honour," the Corporal would say, giving a strong reason to the contrary, "how can that be?" The Montero-cap was scarlet, of a superfine Spanish cloth, dyed in grain, and mounted all round with fur, except about four inches in the front, which was faced with a light blue, slightly embroidered, and seemed to have been the property of a Portuguese quartermaster, not of foot but of horse, as the word denotes. The Corporal was not a little proud of it, as well for its own sake as the sake of the giver, so seldom or never put it on but upon gala-days; and yet never was a Montero-cap put to so many uses; for in all controverted points, whether military or culinary, provided the Corporal was sure he was in the right, it was either his oath, his wager, or his gift. 'Twas his gift in the present case. "I'll be bound," said the Corporal, speaking to himself, "to give away my Montero-cap to the first beggar who comes to the door, if I do not manage this matter to his honour's satisfaction." 67 The completion was no farther off than the very next morning, which was that of the storm of the counter-scarp betwixt the Lower Deule, to the right, and the gate of St. Andrews; and on the left, between St. Magdalen's and the river. As this was the most memorable attack in the whole war-the most gallant and obstinate on both sides-and, I must add, the most bloody too (for it cost the Allies themselves that morning about eleven hundred men), my uncle Toby prepared himself for it with a more than ordinary solemnity. The eve which preceded, as my uncle Toby went to bed, he ordered his Ramallie wig, which had lain, inside out, for many years in the corner of an old campaigning trunk, which stood by his bedside, to be taken out and laid upon the lid of it, ready for the morning; and the very first thing he did, in his shirt, when he had stepped out of bed, my uncle Toby, after he had turned the rough side outwards, put it on. This done, he proceeded next to his breeches; and, having buttoned the waistband, he forthwith buckled on his sword-belt, and had got his sword half way in, when he considered he should want shaving, and that it would be very inconvenient doing it with his sword on-so took it off. In essaying to put on his regimental coat and waistcoat, my uncle Toby found the same objection in his wig; so that went off too. So that, what with one thing and what with another, as it always falls out when a man is in the most haste, 'twas ten o'clock (which was half an hour later than his usual time) before my uncle Toby sallied out. My uncle Toby had scarce turned the corner of his yew-hedge, which separated his kitchen garden from his bowling-green, when he perceived the Corporal had begun the attack without him. Let me stop and give you a picture of the Corporal's apparatus, and of the Corporal himself in the height of the attack, just as it struck my uncle Toby, as he turned towards the sentry-box, where the Corporal was at work, for in nature there is not such another; nor can any combination of all that is grotesque and whimsical in her works produce its equal. The Corporal, who the night before had resolved in his mind to supply the grand desideratum of keeping up something like an incessant firing upon the enemy during the heat of the attack, had no further idea in his fancy, at that time, than a contrivance of smoking tobacco against the town, out of one of my uncle Toby's six field-pieces, which were planted on each side of his sentry-box; the means of effecting which occurring to his fancy at the same time, though he had pledged his cap, he thought in no danger from the miscarriage of his projects. Upon turning it this way and that a little in his mind, he soon began to find out that, by means of his two Turkish tobacco-pipes, with the supplement of three smaller tubes of washleather at each of their lower ends, to be tagged by the same number of tin pipes fitted to the touch-holes, and sealed with clay next the cannon, and then tied hermetically with waxed silk at their several insertions into the morocco tube, he should be able to fire the six field-pieces all together, and with the same ease as to fire one. The Corporal had slipped out about ten minutes before my uncle Toby, in order to fix his apparatus, and just give the enemy a shot or two before my uncle Toby came. He had drawn the six field-pieces, for this end, all close up together in front of my uncle Toby's sentry-box, leaving only an interval of about a yard and a half betwixt the three, on the right and left, for the convenience of charging, &c., and for the sake, possibly, of two batteries, which he might think double the honour of one. In the rear, and facing this opening, with his back to the door of the sentry-box, for fear of being flanked, had the Corporal wisely taken his post. He held the ivory pipe, appertaining to the battery on the right, betwixt the finger and thumb of his right hand; and the ebony pipe tipped with silver, which appertained to the battery on the left, betwixt the finger and thumb of the other; and with his right knee fixed firmly upon the ground, as if in the front rank of his platoon, was the Corporal, with his Montero-cap upon his head, furiously playing off his two cross batteries at the same time against the counter-guard, which faced the counter-scarp, where the attack was to be made that morning. His first intention, as I said, was no more than giving the enemy a single puff or two; but the pleasure of the puffs, as well as the puffing, had insensibly got hold of the Corporal, and drawn him on from puff to puff, into the very height of the attack, by the time my uncle Toby joined him. 'Twas well for my father that my uncle Toby had not his will to make that day. My uncle Toby took the ivory pipe out of the Corporal's hand, looked at it half a minute, and returned it. In less than two minutes, my uncle Toby took the pipe from the Corporal again, and raised it half way to his mouth, then hastily gave it back a second time. The Corporal redoubled the attack; my uncle Toby smiled, then looked grave, then smiled for a moment, then looked serious for a long time. "Give me hold of the ivory pipe, Trim," said my uncle Toby. My uncle Toby put it to his lips, drew it back directly, gave a peep over the hornbean hedge. Never did my uncle Toby's mouth water so much for a pipe in his life. My uncle Toby retired into his sentry-box with his pipe in his hand. Dear uncle Toby! don't go into the sentry-box with the pipe; there's no trusting a man's self with such a thing in such a corner. WHAT IS A WOMAN LIKE? [The authorship of these lines is uncertain.] A WOMAN is like to-but stay- Now an ear, now an eye, Buzz, buzz, always buzzing about one, When she's tender and kind She is like, to my mind (And Fanny was so, I remember), She's like to-oh, dear! She's as good, very near, As a ripe melting peach in September. If she laugh, and she chat, Play, joke, and all that, And with smiles and good humour she meet me, She's like a rich dish Of venison or fish, That cries from the table, Come, eat me! But she'll plague you, and vex you, Distract and perplex you; False-hearted and ranging, Unsettled and changing, What then do you think she is like ? Like the wind, like the sea, Whose raging will hearken to no man; Like a mill, like a pill, Like a flail, like a whale, Like an ass, like a glass Whose image is constant to no man; Like a shower, like a flower, Like a fly, like a pie, Like a pea, like a flea, Like a thief, like-in brief, She's like nothing on earth-but a woman! AURELIA'S UNFORTUNATE YOUNG MAN. THE facts in the following case came to me by She says that when she was sixteen years old she met and loved, with all the devotion of a passionate nature, a young man from New Jersey, named Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers, who was some six years her senior. They were engaged, with the free consent of their friends and relatives, and for a time it seemed as if their career was destined to be characterised by an immunity from sorrow beyond the usual lot of humanity. But at last the tide of fortune turned; young Caruthers became infected with small-pox of the most virulent type, and when he recovered from his illness, his face was pitted like a waffle-mould and his comeliness gone for ever. Aurelia thought to break off the engagement at first, but pity for her unfortunate lover caused her to postpone the marriage-day for a season, and give him another trial. The very day before the wedding was to have taken place, Breckinridge, while absorbed in watching the flight of a balloon, walked into a well and fractured one of his legs, and it had to be taken off above the knee. Again Aurelia was moved to break the engagement, but again love triumphed, and she set the day forward and gave him another chance to reform. And again misfortune overtook the unhappy youth. He lost one arm by the premature discharge of a Fourth-of-July cannon, and within three months he got the other pulled out by a carding-machine. Aurelia's heart was almost crushed by these latter calamities. She could not but be deeply grieved to see her lover passing from her by piecemeal, feeling, as she did, that he could not last for ever under this disastrous process of reduction, yet knowing of no way to stop its dreadful career; and in her tearful despair she almost regretted, like brokers who hold on and lose, that she had not taken him at first, before he had suffered such an alarming_depreciation. Still, her brave soul bore her up, and she resolved to bear with her friend's unnatural disposition yet a little longer. Again the wedding-day approached, and again disappointment overshadowed it: Caruthers fell ill with the erysipelas, and lost the use of one of his eyes entirely. The friends and relatives of the bride, considering that she had already put up with more than could reasonably be expected of her, now came forward and insisted that the match should be broken off: but after wavering awhile, Aurelia, with a generous spirit that did her credit, said she had reflected calmly upon the matter, and could not discover that Breckinridge was to blame. So she extended the time once more, and he broke his other leg. It was a sad day for the poor girl when she saw the surgeons reverently bearing away the sack whose uses she had learned by previous experience, and her heart told her the bitter truth that some more of her lover was gone. She felt that the field of her affections was growing more and more circumscribed every day, but once more she frowned down her relatives and renewed her betrothal. Shortly before the time set for the nuptials another disaster occurred. There was but one man scalped by the Owens River Indians last year. That man was Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers, of New Jersey. He was hurrying home with happiness in his heart, when he lost his hair for ever, and in that hour of bitterness he almost cursed the mistaken mercy that had spared his head. At last Aurelia is in serious perplexity as to what she ought to do. She still loves her Breckinridge, she writes, with truly womanly feeling— she still loves what is left of him—but her parents are bitterly opposed to the match, because he has no property and is disabled from working, and she has not sufficient means to support both comfortably. Now, what should she do?" she asks with painful and anxious solicitude. It is a delicate question; it is one which involves the livelong happiness of a woman, and that of nearly two-thirds of a man, and I feel that it would be assuming too great a responsibility to do more than make a mere suggestion in the case. How would it do to build to him? If Aurelia can afford the expense, let her furnish her mutilated lover with wooden arms and wooden legs, and a glass eye and a wig, and give him another show: give him ninety days, without A FAIRY TALE. grace, and if he does not break his neck in the meantime, marry him and take the chances. It does not seem to me that there is much risk, any way, Aurelia, because if he sticks to his infernal propensity for damaging himself every time he sces a good opportunity, his next experiment is bound to finish him, and then you are all right, you know, married or single. If married, the wooden legs and such other valuables as he may possess, revert to the widow, and you see you sustain no actual loss save the cherished fragment of a noble but most unfortunate husband, 71 who honestly strove to do right, but whose extraordinary instincts were against him. Try it, Maria! I have thought the matter over carefully and well, and it is the only chance I see for you. It would have been a happy conceit on the part of Caruthers if he had started with his neck and broken that first; but since he has seen fit to choose a different policy and string himself out as long as possible, I do not think we ought to upbraid him for it if he has enjoyed it. We must do the best we can under the circumstances, and try not to feel exasperated at him. A FAIRY TALE. [THOMAS PARNELL. Born in Dublin, 1679. Studied at Trinity College, and took orders in 1700. One of the contributors to the "Spectator." He died at Chester, July, 1717.] IN Britain's isle, and Arthur's days, Lived Edwin of the Green; His mountain back mote well be said He felt the charms of Edith's eyes, "Twas near an old enchanted court, To revel out the night. His heart was drear, his hope was cross'd, 'Twas late, 'twas far, the path was lost That reach'd the neighbour town; On all the walls around. Now sounding tongues assail his car, And now the sounds increase : Come prankling o'er the place. But (trust me, gentles!) never yet Was dight a masquing half so neat, Or half so rich, before; The country lent the sweet perfumes, The sea the pearl, the sky the plumes, The town its silken store. Now, whilst he gazed, a gallant, drest In flaunting robes above the rest, With awful accent cried : "What mortal, of a wretched,mind, Whose sighs infect the balmy wind, Has here presumed to hide ?" At this the swain, whose vent'rous soul No fears of magic art controul, Advanced in open sight; "Nor have I cause of dread," he said, "Who view, by no presumption led, Your revels of the night. 'Twas grief, for scorn of faithful love, Which made my steps unweeting rove Amid the nightly dew." ""Tis well," the gallant cries again; 66 'We fairies never injure men To make thee grief resign; Be little Mable thine." He spoke, and, all a sudden, there The Monarch leads the Queen: |