ether silent, or vocal and articulate. I waited for a favorable
opportunity, however, before making the remarks which follow.]

----There are single expressions, as I have told you already, that fix
a man's position for you before you have done shaking hands with him.
Allow me to expand a little. There are several things, very slight in
themselves, yet implying other things not so unimportant. Thus, your
French servant has _devalise_ your premises and got caught. _Excusez_,
says the _sergent-de-ville_, as he politely relieves him of his upper
garments and displays his bust in the full daylight. Good shoulders
enough,--a little marked,--traces of smallpox, perhaps,--but
white....._Crac!_ from the _sergent-de-ville's_ broad palm on the white
shoulder! Now look! _Vogue la galere!_ Out comes the big red V--mark of
the hot iron;--he had blistered it out pretty nearly,--hadn't he?--the
old rascal VOLEUR, branded in the galleys at Marseilles! [Don't! What
if he has got something like this? nobody supposes I _invented_ such a
story.]

My man John, who used to drive two of those six equine females which I
told you I had owned,--for, look you, my friends, simple though I stand
here, I am one that has been driven in his "kerridge,"--not using that
term, as liberal shepherds do, for any battered old shabby-genteel
go-cart that has more than one wheel, but meaning thereby a four-wheeled
vehicle _with a pole_,--my man John, I say, was a retired soldier. He
retired unostentatiously, as many of Her Majesty's modest servants have
done before and since. John told me, that when an officer thinks he
recognizes one of these retiring heroes, and would know if he has really
been in the service, that he may restore him, if possible, to a grateful
country, he comes suddenly upon him, and says, sharply, "Strap!" If he
has ever worn the shoulder-strap, he has learned the reprimand for its
ill adjustment. The old word of command flashes through his muscles, and
his hand goes up in an instant to the place where the strap used to be.

[I was all the time preparing for my grand _coup_, you understand; but
I saw they were not quite ready for it, and so continued,--always in
illustration of the general principle I had laid down.]

Yes, odd things come out in ways that nobody thinks of. There was a
legend, that, when the Danish pirates made descents upon the English
coast, they caught a few Tartars occasionally, in the shape of Saxons,
that would not