Camps, Quarters, and Casual PlacesForbes, Archibald
History
Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places
Forbes, Archibald
Military camps; Military history, Modern
At four o'clock we sit down to the market ordinary in the great room of
the Caledonian. A member of Parliament occupies the chair, one of the
croupiers is a baronet, the other the chief of the clan Mackintosh.
There is a great collection of north-country notabilities, and tables
upon tables of sheep-farmers and sheep-dealers. We have a considerable
_cacoethes_ of speech-making, among the orators being Professor Blackie
of Edinburgh, whose quaint comicalities convulse his audience. It is
pretty late when the Professor rises to speak, and the whisky has been
flowing free. Some one interjects a whiskyfied interruption into the
Professor's speech, who at once in stentorian tones orders that the
disturber of the harmony of the evening shall be summarily consigned to
the lunatic asylum. I see him ejected with something like the force of
a stone from a catapult and have no reasonable doubt that he will spend
the night an inmate of "Craig Duncan." The speeches over bargaining
recommences moistened by toddy, which fluid appears to exercise an
appreciable softening influence on the "dourness" of the market. Till
long after midnight seasoned vessels are talking and dealing, booking
sales while they sip their tenth tumbler.
I have to leave on the Saturday morning, but I make no doubt that the
skeleton programme given at the beginning of this paper will have its
bones duly clothed with flesh.
THE WARFARE OF THE FUTURE
At first sight the proposition may appear startling and indeed absurd;
yet hard facts, I venture to believe, will enforce the conviction on
unprejudiced minds that the warfare of the present when contrasted with
the warfare of the past is dilatory, ineffective, and inconclusive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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