wrote with loving tenderness.

The next episode in the career of Mayne Reid was not what one would
expect from a man of letters, though it was just what might have been
expected from a man of his temperament and antecedents. It grew out of
the time, which was warlike, and it drove him into the army with which
the United States speedily crushed the forces of the sister
Republic--Mexico. He obtained a commission, and served throughout the
war with great bravery and distinction. This stormy episode ended with a
severe wound, which he received in storming the heights of
Chapultepec--a terrible battle which practically ended the war.

A second episode of a similar character, but with a more fortunate
conclusion, occurred about four years later. It grew out of another war,
which, happily for us, was not on our borders, but in the heart of
Europe, where the Hungarian race had risen in insurrection against the
hated power of Austria. Their desperate valor in the face of tremendous
odds excited the sympathy of the American people, and fired the heart of
Captain Mayne Reid, who buckled on his sword once more, and sailed from
New York with a body of volunteers to aid the Hungarians in their
struggles for independence. They were too late, for hardly had they
reached Paris before they learned that all was over: Goergey had
surrendered at Arad, and Hungary was crushed. They were at once
dismissed, and Captain Reid betook himself to London.

The life of the Mayne Reid in whom we are most interested--Mayne Reid,
the author--began at this time, when he was in his thirty-first year,
and ended only on the day of his death, October 21, 1883. It covered
one-third of a century, and was, when compared with that which had
preceded it, uneventful, if not devoid of incident. There is not much
that needs be told--not much, indeed, that can be told--in the life of a
man of letters like Captain Mayne Reid. It is written in his books.
Mayne Reid was one of the best known authors of his time--differing in
this from many authors who are popular without being known--and in the
walk of fiction which he discovered for himself he is an acknowledged
master. His reputation did not depend upon the admiration of the
millions of young people who read his books, but upon the judgment of
mature critics, to whom his delineations of adventurous life were
literature of no common order. His reputation as a story-teller was
widely recognized on the Continent, wher