an officer of the British army, now
on half-pay, and getting on in years. His wife was going home with him;
for their children were married and settled in England, all but one, now
in San Francisco. And that one being well placed in the firm of Heniker,
Banks, and Co., had obtained for his father and mother passage upon
favorable terms, which was, as we say, "an object to them."

For the Major, though admirably connected (as his kinship to Colonel
Gundry showed), and having a baronet not far off (if the twists of the
world were set aside), also having served his country, and received
a furrow on the top of his head, which made him brush his hair up,
nevertheless, or all the more for that, was as poor as a British officer
must be without official sesame. How he managed to feed and teach a
large and not clever family, and train them all to fight their way in a
battle worse than any of his own, and make gentlemen and ladies of them,
whatever they did or wherever they went, he only knew, and his faithful
wife, and the Lord who helps brave poverty. Of such things he never
spoke, unless his temper was aroused by luxury and self-indulgence and
laziness.

But now he was a little better off, through having his children off his
hands, and by means of a little property left him by a distant relative.
He was on his way home to see to this; and a better man never returned
to England, after always standing up for her.

Being a child in the ways of the world, and accustomed to large people,
I could not make out Major Hockin at first, and thought him no more than
a little man with many peculiarities. For he was not so tall as myself,
until he put his high-heeled boots on, and he made such a stir about
trifles at which Uncle Sam would have only grunted, that I took him to
be nothing more than a fidgety old campaigner. He wore a black-rimmed
double eyeglass with blue side-lights at his temples, and his hat, from
the shape of his forehead, hung back; he had narrow white wiry whiskers,
and a Roman nose, and most prominent chin, and keen gray eyes with
gingery brows, which contracted, like sharp little gables over
them, whenever any thing displeased him. Rosy cheeks, tight-drawn,
close-shaven, and gleaming with friction of yellow soap, added vigor
to the general expression of his face, which was firm and quick and
straightforward. The weather being warm, and the tropics close at hand,
Major Hockin was dressed in a fine suit of Nankin, spr