“Well, now,” said Peter Dealtry, as he pushed the brown jug towards the Corporal, “this is what I call pleasant; it puts me in mind--” “Of what?” quoth the Corporal. “Of those nice lines in the hymn, Master Bunting. ‘How fair ye are, ye little hills, Ye little fields also; Ye murmuring streams that sweetly run; Ye willows in a row!’ “There is something very comfortable in sacred verses, Master Bunting; but you’re a scoffer.” “Psha, man!” said the Corporal, throwing out his right leg and leaning back, with his eyes half-shut, and his chin protruded, as he took an unusually long inhalation from his pipe; “Psha, man!--send verses to the right-about--fit for girls going to school of a Sunday; full-grown men more up to snuff. I’ve seen the world, Master Dealtry;--the world, and be damned to you!--augh!” “Fie, neighbour, fie! What’s the good of profaneness, evil speaking and slandering?-- ‘Oaths are the debts your spendthrift soul must pay; All scores are chalked against the reckoning day.’ Just wait a bit, neighbour; wait till I light my pipe.” “Tell you what,” said the Corporal, after he had communicated from his own pipe the friendly flame to his comrade’s; “tell you what--talk nonsense; the commander-in-chief’s no Martinet--if we’re all right in action, he’ll wink at a slip word or two. Come, no humbug--hold jaw. D’ye think God would sooner have snivelling fellow like you in his regiment, than a man like me, clean limbed, straight as a dart, six feet one without his shoes!--baugh!” This notion of the Corporal’s, by which he would have likened the dominion of Heaven to the King of Prussia’s body-guard, and only admitted the elect on account of their inches, so tickled mine host’s fancy, that he leaned back in his chair, and indulged in a long, dry, obstreperous cachinnation. This irreverence mightily displeased the Corporal. He looked at the little man very sourly, and said in his least smooth accentuation:-- “What--devil--cackling at?--always grin, grin, grin--giggle, giggle, giggle--psha!” “Why really, neighbour,” said Peter, composing himself, “you must let a man laugh now and then.” “Man!” said the Corporal; “man’s a noble animal! Man’s a musquet, primed, loaded, ready to supply a friend or kill a foe--charge not to be wasted on every tom-tit. But you! not a musquet, but a cracker! noisy, harmless,--can’t touch you, but off you go, whizz, pop, bang in one’s face!--baugh!” “Well!” said the good-humoured landlord, “I should think Master Aram, the great scholar who lives down the vale yonder, a man quite after your own heart. He is grave enough to suit you. He does not laugh very easily, I fancy.” “After my heart? Stoops like a bow!” “Indeed he does look on the ground as he walks; when I think, I do the same. But what a marvellous man it is! I hear, that he reads the Psalms in Hebrew. He’s very affable and meek-like for such a scholard.”