RALF-A-CENTURY OF VOLUNTEERING.i. Ma. MACDONALD thinks that his liking for
soldiering may have been " in the blood." It is not improbable, seeing that all of his six uncles on the father's side were soldiers. His own wishes had tended that way ; but the ending of the Crimean War seemed to shut the prospect of employment, and he took to the law. Then came the movement of 1859, for which we have immediately to thank certain fire-eating french Colonels, and the Scottish Bar formed a corps, to which Mr. Macdonald, who was then a "Bar intrant" or "Inns of Court Student," as we say in the South, attached himself. This is the beginning of the story which our author tells. Things have changed not a little during the half-century which it includes. There was much that was ludicrous in those early days. " The Territorial of this century would be astonished," writes Mr. Macdonald,
Condoe Frontiersman's Pocket-Book. Compiled and Edited by Roger Pocock. John Murray. [5s. net.3—(2) The Book of Camping and Woodcraft. nr Horace Kephart. Loudon: Grant Richards. [4s. net.] Viev of It the Experiences and Struggles of a Volunteer of 1880. By • ••• A. Macdonald. London W. Bleak wood and Sons. rlOs. 6d. not.]
"could he see the roll-books of 1859." Grave citizens,,often men of middle age, submitted themselves to the absurdities of an obsolete drill-book, standing " with elbows jammed against the sides, the bands with rigid fingers and palms flattened out to the front, thumb tight to forefinger, and the little finger close to the seam of the trousers." But these wooden figures, which were not less absurd when they had to show themselves alive at the rifle ranges, bad the root of the matter in them. Where are the " lawyers, professors, merchants," who formed the Volunteer corps now ? They have given place, with some honourable exceptions, to the clerk and the artisan. Not without reason did the Third Parliament of James IV. ordain that " in na place of the Realme there be used futt-ball, golfe, or other sik like unprofitable sports." Mr. Macdonald's book is an admirable mixture of the grave and gay. He has some serious criticisms of the " Regular" soldier as be has seen him,—the officers who came to serve in the Volunteer companies were often absolutely useless, and he does not spare his own comrades. These are among the serious topics of his book; and the sportive are never very far off. With quoting one of these we must be content. A certain captain of a company was a fervent advocate of total abstinence. Drink and tobacco were hateful to him, and when lie inspected his men he was more intent on discovering whether they had been drinking or smoking than whether their accoutrements were up to the mark. One man, accused first of one crime and then of the other, replied: " Ye wud make an uncommon fine pinter bitch."
Previous page
