Hurrah! hurrah! a soldier's life for me!
Shout, boys, shout! for it makes you jolly and free.
The Ramrod Corps.
People who have seen say that one of the quaintest spectacles of human
frailty is an outbreak of hysterics in a girls' school. It starts
without warning, generally on a hot afternoon, among the elder pupils. A
girl giggles till the giggle gets beyond control. Then she throws up
her head and cries, “Honk, honk, honk,” like a wild goose, and tears mix
with the laughter. If the mistress be wise, she will rap out something
severe at this point to check matters. If she be tender-hearted, and
send for a drink of water, the chances are largely in favour of another
girl laughing at the afflicted one and herself collapsing. Thus the
trouble spreads, and may end in half of what answers to the Lower Sixth
of a boys' school rocking and whooping together. Given a week of warm
weather, two stately promenades per diem, a heavy mutton and rice meal
in the middle of the day, a certain amount of nagging from the teachers,
and a few other things, some amazing effects develop. At least, this is
what folk say who have had experience.
Now, the Mother Superior of a Convent and the Colonel of a British
Infantry Regiment would be justly shocked at any comparison being made
between their respective charges. But it is a fact that, under certain
circumstances, Thomas in bulk can be worked up into ditthering, rippling
hysteria. He does not weep, but he shows his trouble unmistakably, and
the consequences get into the newspapers, and all the good people
who hardly know a Martini from a Snider say: “Take away the brute's
ammunition!”
Thomas isn't a brute, and his business, which is to look after the
virtuous people, demands that he shall have his ammunition to his hand.
He doesn't wear silk stockings, and he really ought to be supplied with
a new Adjective to help him to express his opinions: but, for all that,
he is a great man. If you call him “the heroic defender of the national
honour” one day, and “a brutal and licentious soldiery” the next, you
naturally bewilder him, and he looks upon you with suspicion. There is
nobody to speak for Thomas except people who have theories to work off
on him, and nobody understands Thomas except Thomas, and he does not
always know what is the matter with himself.