Page:Carroll - Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.djvu/242

204 ''fortunes of the campaign. They had routed the enemy at every point. But the pursuit must be continued. They had only to follow up a disordered and dispirited foe.''

"Now to what portion of your national history would you guess that the speaker was referring?"

"Really, the number of successful wars we have waged during the last century," I replied, with a glow of British pride, "Is far too great for me to guess, with any chance of success, which it was we were then engaged in. However, I will name India as the most probable. The Mutiny was no doubt, all but crushed, at the time that speech was made. What a fine, manly, patriotic speech it must have been!" I exclaimed in an outburst of enthusiasm.

"You think so?" he replied, in a tone of gentle pity. "Yet my friend tells me that the disordered and dispirited foe simply meant the Statesmen who happened to be in power at the moment; that the pursuit simply meant 'Obstruction'; and that the