Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/564

552 Where is one likely to meet with it, do you think?"

"You need be under no anxiety on that score, sir," said Braddon; "you will find it very accommodating and ready to wait upon you wherever you are."

"By the way," said the young medical man, turning to his host, "have you read O'Hara on cholera? Just out, you know, published by Churchill & Co."

"No, I haven't," replied Grumbull; "and, what is more, I don't mean to. I don't want O'Hara or anybody else to tell me what cholera is, — me a man who has been twenty years in the country."

"I suppose, then, you go in for the germ theory?"

"No, I don't believe in germs (Dr. Grumbull pronounced this word as if it were spelt jurrums), or any new-fangled stuff of the sort. Look here, my good sir," he continued, bringing down his hand with a thump on the mess-table, "you have cholera on the plains of Bengal, and you have cholera on the highlands of Thibet, fifteen thousand feet above the sea, haven't you? Well, then, I say, isn't the thing as plain as a pike-staff? It's the variations of temperature that cause cholera, of course, and I don't care what anybody else says."

"The cholera is an awful thing when it breaks out in a European regiment," observed the major after a pause.

"Have you ever served with a European regiment, sir?" asked the stranger, turning towards him.

"No, sir; and never wish to. The European soldier is a queer customer sometimes, I can tell you. I heard once of a man in the old Diehards; the captain of his company was finding fault with him because his knapsack wasn't straight, and he turned round and bawled out, 'I haven't got eyes in the back of my head, have I?' Now no sepoy would have answered his officer like that."

"Ah, and do you remember that story of Poynings and the European gunner at the siege of Bhurtpore?" said Major Passey, a small, weatherbeaten old fellow, with a red face and white hair, who had remained silent up to this point.

"Ah, what a fine man Poynings was!" continued the commandant. "He exchanged out of the 19th Lancers when they went home in 1832, into the 23d Dragoons."

"No, the 22d Dragoons," said Passey, in correction; "the 23d went home in '33."

"Ay, so it was. Poynings was commanding the 22d at Cawnpore, when we were there in 1834. He would sit at mess over the bottle till gunfire the next morning, and then his charger would be brought to the door, and he would ride off to parade as steady and fresh as if he had been in bed all night. He was a man of very good family, too, was Poynings; he had a cousin an Irish peer. Ah, those were fine times! wheat was down then to forty seers, and you might keep a horse for five rupees a month. The 22d lost a hundred men from cholera that very year."

"Ah, what a splendid corps the 22d was!" observed Passey, after a pause, by way of keeping up the conversation.

"It was indeed," said the major. "Cawnpore was a fine station in those days for a young fellow to learn his duty at; brigade-parades and grand guard-mounting regularly once a month, all through the cold weather. Old General Mudge was commanding the division. He died in 1836. It was thought he would have got into council if he had lived."

"Wasn't it Mudge who had the row with Poynings, because he inspected the 22d in his carriage?" asked Passey.

"Yes, to be sure, so it was. Mudge couldn't ride, you know; he had been in the stud department for a great many years; but he spoke the language like a native. Only fancy, he was a regimental field-officer when Lord Lake was commander-in-chief."

"There's a fine picture of Lord Lake at Government House in Calcutta," observed Passey.

"Ay, and of Warren Hastings too," continued the major. "When I entered the service, the colonel of my battalion (we were the second battalion of the 38th then) had known Warren Hastings. He remembers seeing him arrive at Calcutta from up country, and get out of his palanquin, with silk stockings on, and buckles on his shoes. Only think, silk stockings and buckles in a palanquin! Dear me! what changes one sees in dress, to be sure!" continued Dumble, philosophically. "How do you like the new tunic, Passey?"

"Have there been many changes in the uniform of the army since you entered the service, major?" asked young Raugh, to whom the subject of dress was one at present of leading interest, and to whom it had been a blow and disappointment, on joining the regiment a few weeks before, to find that the officers