rranged that a clean-run youth of
the British middle classes shall, in the matter of backbone, brains,
and bowels, surpass all other youths. For this reason a child of
eighteen will stand up, doing nothing, with a tin sword in his hand
and joy in his heart until he is dropped. If he dies, he dies like a
gentleman. If he lives, he writes Home that he has been 'potted,'
'sniped,' 'chipped,' or 'cut over,' and sits down to besiege
Government for a wound-gratuity until the next little war breaks out,
when he perjures himself before a Medical Board, blarneys his Colonel,
burns incense round his Adjutant, and is allowed to go to the Front
once more.

Which homily brings me directly to a brace of the most finished little
fiends that ever banged drum or tootled fife in the Band of a British
Regiment. They ended their sinful career by open and flagrant mutiny
and were shot for it. Their names were Jakin and Lew--Piggy Lew--and
they were bold, bad drummer-boys, both of them frequently birched by
the Drum-Major of the Fore and Aft.

Jakin was a stunted child of fourteen, and Lew was about the same age.
When not looked after, they smoked and drank. They swore habitually
after the manner of the Barrack-room, which is cold-swearing and comes
from between clinched teeth; and they fought religiously once a week.
Jakin had sprung from some London gutter, and may or may not have
passed through Dr. Barnardo's hands ere he arrived at the dignity of
drummer-boy. Lew could remember nothing except the Regiment and the
delight of listening to the Band from his earliest years. He hid
somewhere in his grimy little soul a genuine love for music, and was
most mistakenly furnished with the head of a cherub: insomuch that
beautiful ladies who watched the Regiment in church were wont to speak
of him as a 'darling.' They never heard his vitriolic comments on
their manners and morals, as he walked back to barracks with the Band
and matured fresh causes of offence against Jakin.

The other drummer-boys hated both lads on account of their illogical
conduct. Jakin might be pounding Lew, or Lew might be rubbing Jakin's
head in the dirt, but any attempt at aggression on the part of an
outsider was met by the combined forces of Lew and Jakin; and the
consequences were painful. The boys were the Ishmaels of the corps,
but wealthy Ishmaels, for they sold battles in alternate weeks for the
sport of the barracks when they were not pitted against other boys;