Very well. Let me tell you my story. It's
perfectly true, I give you my word. So Nevil tries to horse Drew, and
Drew proposes to horse Nevil, as at school. Then Drew offers a
compromise. He would much rather have crawled on, you know, and allowed
the shot to pass over his head; but he's a Briton--old Nevil's the same;
but old Nevil's peculiarity is that, as you are aware, he hates a
compromise--won't have it--_retro Sathanas!_--and Drew's proposal to
take his arm instead of being carried pick-a-or piggy-back--I am
ignorant how Nevil spells it--disgusts old Nevil. Still it won't do to
stop where they are, like the cocoanut and pincushion of our friends
the gipsies on the downs; so they take arms and commence the journey
home, resembling the best friends on the evening of a holiday in our
native clime--two steps to the right, half a dozen to the left, &c. They
were knocked down by the wind of a ball near the battery. 'Confound it!'
cries Nevil. 'It's because I consented to a compromise!'"
Most people know that this passage refers to Rear-Admiral Maxse, yet,
well as we may know our man, we have him presented like an awkward,
silly, comic puppet from a show. The professor of slang could degrade
the conduct of the soldiers on board the _Birkenhead_; he could make the
choruses from _Samson Agonistes_ seem like the Cockney puerilities of a
comic news-sheet.
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