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 "If you want to have a good time, jine the cavalry." He liked to live in the blare of trumpets and the crash of cymbals, liked to have his nerves tingle and his blood leap to a merry hunts-up or a riotous chorus, liked to have the high strain of war's melodrama broken by the sudden crackle of the snare-drum. His banjo-player, Sweeney, was as near to him as an aide-de-camp, fol- lowed him everywhere. " Stuart wrote his most impor- tant correspondence with the rattle of the gay instru- ment stunning everybody, and would turn round from his work, burst into a laugh, and join uproariously in Sweeney's chorus." ^^

And dance was as keen a spice to peril as song and laughter. To fight all day and dance all night was a good day's work to this creature of perfect physique and inexhaustible energy. If his staff officers could not keep pace with him and preferred a little sleep, the general did not like it at all. What? Here is — or was — a gay town, and pretty girls. Just because we are here to-day and gone to-morrow, shall we not fleet the time care- lessly, as they did in the golden world? And the girls are got together, and a ball is organized, and the fun grows swifter and swifter. Perhaps a fortunate officer picks the prettiest and is about to stand up with her. Stuart whispers in his ear that a hurried message must be carried, laughs his gay laugh, and slips into the vacant place. Then an orderly hurries in, covered with dust. The enemy are upon us. "The officers rushed to their

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