and five chairs had been placed round it. In front of each were put blue paper, pens, and ink. I grew more and more frightened when I found I was to be tried by court-martial for a great and heinous offence committed against her Majesty.

Burroughes did not waste a moment in taking his seat at the table as president of the courtmartial, and the other four were quickly filled in by junior officers. A sixth was appointed prosecutor; two were announced as witnesses, and three were told-off as a guard, one of them being promoted to the rank of corporal of the guard in charge of the prisoner.

The charges were then read as follows: 1. Conduct prejudicial to the maintenance of good order and discipline on the part of John Strange Winter, cornet of the 52d Dragoons, in having at Colchester, on the night of the 10th of July 18-, gone to bed, whilst several guests, officers of another regiment, remained in the ante

before you, so help you, Jorrocks, &c.

This was taken in due form, and with the utmost gravity. Handley Cross being, I believe, the book used; and the trial proceeded.

Lieutenant Bates, on being duly sworn, stated:

'Sir, at Colchester Barracks, on the night of the 10th of July 18-, I saw the prisoner now before the court-martial sneak off to bed about half-past eleven. There were several guests, officers of another regiment, still remaining in the anteroom. I was also present when the prisoner was arrested in his own room.'

Lieutenant Cavasson being duly sworn, stated :

'Sir, I was in the mess-room when the prisoner went to bed. There were several captains and other senior officers still in the room.'

This closed the evidence for the prosecution and the question was put to me,

Have you anything to urge in your defence?'

I told them in a tremulous voice that I really was very tired, that I did not dream I was committing an outrageous offence, and that I wouldn't do it again.

Then I was conducted out of the room whilst the court considered its sentence.

Whilst we were waiting outside my guards with the witnesses and junior officers amused themselves and terrified me by relating previous sentences, and wondering what I should get. It was awfully cold waiting about, for, although it was midsummer and very hot in the day, yet, in the small hours of the night, to wait ten minutes in a draughty hall with no more clothing than a night-shirt and a pouch-belt is a very different matter. At last we were sum

moned within, and I was led to my place at the foot of the table. Lieutenant Burroughes broke the silence.

'John Strange Winter, you have been found guilty of two very glaring and heinous offences, and this court has adjudged that you receive two strokes from a birch-rod from every member of the mess now present. I hope it may be a warning to you for the future.'

This announcement was received by my tormentors with a ringing cheer. I was ready to sink with fright when I saw the birch produced, and rough hands were laid upon me. My guard with the tongs, although apparently the roughest of the lot, whispered to me to 'hold my jaw and neither struggle nor cry out; and something in the kindly voice told me his advice was good, so I took it.

The castigation was mere child's play, except when it came to Burroughes's turn.

'Ah, this won't do,' I heard him say; 'we shall have the young beggar laughing in his sleeve at

us.

We really must show him that there is something like discipline in the regiment.'

And he certainly did.

'Well, come now,' said that stern gentleman, when my punishment was over, the young one's plucky, at all events.'

If my brother officers had administered necessary strictness, I certainly could not complain of the way in which I was treated afterward; for they carried me off into the mess-room, where we found a supper of grilled bones, devilled kidneys, and so forth, spread upon the table.

When we had eaten and drunken I was ordered to mount the brass and sing a song. The 'brass' was a square piece of that metal form

ed by the meeting of the leaves of the table; and a queer figure I must have cut in my scanty attire. They seemed to think so, for they all laughed and cheered heartily.

I had the sense to know that a moment's hesitation would be fatal to my popularity, and I dashed at once into the first comic song that came into my head. It was the story of a sailor who got cast away upon an island, taken prisoner by savages, who appropriated his clothes to themselves, finally marrying him to a princess of the royal blood. It was received with uproarious applause; but, unfortunately for me, I did not get to the end without an interruption. I only sang as far as, 'And there behold me standing,

A waistcoat for my clothes,
A hat and boots, striped red and blue,

And a ring stuck through my nose,' when, to my dismay, I heard a voice suggesting that it would be all the better if I were dressed in character. The idea caught like wildfire two pots of paint were produced, whence I know not, and in an incredibly short time I was daubed from head to foot with rings of red and blue paint, and again mounted on the brass to finish my song.

At last the revelries were ended, and I was permitted to go to my room, thoroughly worn out, and half stifled by the disgusting smell and feeling of the paint. Luckily I knew something of art, and had a big bottle of turpentine with me, which, with the help of a palette-knife, brought most of the stuff off.

It was broad daylight ere I sought my couch; and when at length I fell asleep, it was only to dream it all over again, and to sing in fancy the chorus of my song,

Jam-see, jee-mee, jabber jee hoy!

Jabberee, doree, poree,
Hikey, pikey, sikey, crikey,
Chilingowoolab adoree!"

IN a proverb, which is one of the household words of the English people, we are told that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. In these days of cram and competition we all of us may do well to bear in mind the truths contained in this saying. To rise in our profession, to keep ourselves before the public, to obtain the ordinary means of sus tenance, all make us so incessant in our efforts and so dangerously industrious that often, even if we are fortunate enough to grasp the laurel-wreath of victory, we have to exchange it for the cypress of the funereal garland. We are so eager, so anxious, so terribly in earnest, in our struggles for selfadvancement, that we allow ourselves no time for relaxation and repose. We are in business; we know the competitors who are pitted against us, and who are ever ready to profit by our negligence and over-caution, consequently we worry our nervous system to give competition no chance; we begin our labours early and end them late; we essay to checkmate our rivals at every turn; we plot our commercial combinations with the most consummate skill, so as not to leave a single point in our operations for the enemy to obtain an advantage; and then jubilant and triumphant, we lay our heads upon our bursting moneybags, only for a shattered constitution, that has for years been kept at high pressure, and has been sternly denied its necessary rest and pleasures, to own itself vanquished, and to force us sud

denly to quit the scenes of our struggles. We are at the Bar; we have had to wait years for our practice, and have no intention, now that the tide has turned, of not being borne upon its waters to fortune; we work as a slave at the galleys-in court all day, in the House of Commons all night, and in the gray of the early morning we are seen studying our briefs; then, when dyspepsia has claimed us for its own, and our liver is as swollen as our briefbag, we stretch forth our hand and take hold of the prizes that are set before us-how long to enjoy them how soon to relinquish them? We live in the days when the survival of the fittest is our creed, when success or extinction is our motto, and how often have we to fall martyrs to our faith! Human nature, like the seashore, or even the appetite of an alderman, has its limits, and in endeavouring to go beyond we are bound to be made suffer for our short-sighted temerity. If we work we must have recreation; if we waste our tissues by intellectual or physical labour we must restore the deficiency by pleasure or repose, for all work and no play, not only makes the typical Jack a dull, but soon a defunct, boy. Labour and leisure are the laws of our moral being, and they are not to be infringed with impunity.

But how are we to obtain repose or relaxation? Repose is not rest when it degenerates into ennui; and relaxation, which is obtained by disagreeable efforts,

is not pleasure.

We may not have the requisite means to provide the most exhilarating of all pleasures: the cheerful canter, the brisk bracing trot, the excitement of a day with the hounds, may be to us unknown joys, and as much beyond our reach as dry sherry and a winter at Mentone are to the parish pauper. Gout, rheumatism, and confounded old age may compel us to eschew cricket and lawn-tennis, archery and rinking. What are we to do? Even if authors were always amusing or instructive, we cannot ever be trying our eyes with reading. Music, we know, has charms to soothe the savage breast; but good music is not always to be had, and even when we are fortunate enough to be able to listen to it, how often, after a hard day's work, does it result in wrapping its tired audience in irreverent slumber? We want relaxation without the severity of fatigue, interest without a baneful excitement, and amusement without depression. Where can you get it? I answer, At the whisttable.

Is there a happier period in the whole day than when, after a comfortable dinner with digestion agreeably waiting upon appetite, cigar in mouth, we betake ourselves to the fascinating board of green cloth; the well-shaded candles shedding a soft subdued light upon the table; the clean cards longing to be set free from their virgin cases; the red and white counters standing apart in separate groups, like the armies in the Wars of the Roses awaiting the conflict; the hush of the room, the imagination busy with the anticipated victories of science over luck? There are many excellent people who, because gambling is associated with cards, strictly taboo 'the devil's picture-books,'

and will not permit them to take any part in the pleasures of their households. No one who has seen the terrible miseries that follow in the wake of the gambler's career can say that this objection is wholly undeserved. It is not for me to preach. Like most men I have known what it is to watch with eager eyes the fall of the cards at trente et quarante, to hope for the lucky eight or nine at baccarat, and to put in an appearance at the fascinating round games of loo, Napoleon, brag, poker, and Newmarket. But with age comes experience; and when invited by the voice of the charmer to depart from the legitimate paths of card-playing, a stern and Spartan-like negative is my only answer. What! never? Well, hardly ever!

But whist is not gambling; it is a game which calls forth some of the best faculties of the brain, and causes chance to succumb before science. A whist-player of the first class requires to possess keen powers of observation, a clear and tenacious memory, the gift of quickly drawing inferences, a knowledge of varied combinations, and a shrewdness always on the watch for opportunity. It is much to be regretted that at most of the clubs so fine a game should be placed out of the reach of many men on account of the high points that are played. Whist is a study so pleasurable in itself that it can entirely dispense with the pernicious excitement of the gambler; to play for points which may involve a heavy pecuniary loss is utterly destructive of the beauty of the game; instead of a pleasant intellectual excitement, it then degenerates into anxiety, and is the fruitful parent of ill-temper, worry, and a feverish state of things utterly at variance with the spirit of the

game. Men of fortune will always be prone to gamble; yet there is nothing to prevent them from playing moderately low points, and betting amongst each other as high as they please. Were they to adopt this plan many a man, who keenly loves the noble game, but who is deterred from cutting in from the heavy losses he may be led to sustain, would often find his way into the card-room, to the enjoyment of himself and to the detriment of nobody. Half-crown points are quite sufficient to create excitement, and would not require on the part of the social Lazarus a large balance to lie idle at his banker's to meet a run of bad luck. But when it comes to crowns and pounds or ten-shilling points, and a fiver on the rub, or pounds and fives, a few nights of misfortune signify the loss of a small income. Whist should be played for the love of the game, and not for the money it may the means of obtaining.

be

It has been said that every one thinks he can drive, and most persons think they can play whist. It seems to the uninitiated so simple for four people to sit down at a table and each to play thirteen cards. These guileless folk may be ignorant of the leads, they may have never studied the pages of Cavendish, they afford no information to their partner; yet they seldom, in private life, scruple to cut in and spoil a table. They look upon whist as they look upon a round game-not a thing to be studied seriously, because with good cards one wins, and with bad cards one loses. To read up the subject attentively seems beneath them; whist with them is a game, not a science. How often do we hear men saying, 'I am am very fond of taking a hand at whist, but I can't be bothered about the rules, and all that!'

Why cannot they be bothered? What would they think of a man who said he was very fond of hunting, but who couldn't be bothered about learning to ride; or of a man who boated, but couldn't be bothered about learning to row; or who played cricket, racquets, lawn-tennis, but couldn't be bothered to learn the game? Why do they play whist week after week, yet systematically refuse to study the subject? To be a firstclass whist-player is a gift, and few there be who possess it; but any one not a born fool can by a few weeks' study so far instruct himself in the game as to acquire the recognised rules-to know what cards to lead, what to play second hand, what to return to his partner, and how to deal with trumps. Whist has its laws like mathematics or political economy, and a man has no more chance of playing a rubber correctly without reading them up than he has of writing an article on the currency without knowing something of political economy, or of working out a problem without being acquainted with geometry. To put these laws into a simple and readable shape is the object of every writer upon whist, but nowhere have I come across instructions more lucid and more easy to be remembered than in the following verses, which were copied by me as they hung over the mantelpiece of a provincial club. Who is the author of this clever production I know not, but let me render him immortal in the pages of London Society:

'THE GAME OF WHIST.

IF you the modern game of whist would know,

From this great principle its precepts flow:

Treat your own hand as to your partner's joined,

And play, not one alone, but both combined.