48 CAWNPORE.
his left in any Oriental language. In such an atmosphere how could mutual attachment exist, or mutual confidence? How could there not exist dislike and disaffection; the bitterness of mjured pride, and of feelings misunderstood or heedlessly contemned?
There were usually some eight or nine officers actually doing duty with a battalion. A colonel and doctor, three or four captains and lieutenants, and three or four ensigns, formed what was in those days considered to be a very respectable complement. The other members of the mess were far away from head-quarters, inditing minutes at Calcutta, deciding suits in some distant non-regulation province, or tracking the course of the Nile through the deserts of Nubia. Such, however, was not universally the case. Here and there might be found a corps where the regimental tone, that unwritten and impalpable law, not passed in words, nor enforced by overt penalties, but obeyed in silence and without question, had ordained that staff employment was not a legitimate object of ambition. The officers plumed themselves upon keeping all together, and rising one with another in the ordinary course of promotion. ‘They shot tigers, and speared hogs, and played whist and billiards, and meanwhile looked well after their companies, and contrived
