During that term he never met reproach but once. It was at the hands of the officer who had induced him to enter the army, and who could never forgive the recruit for rising to a very superior greatness to that achieved by the recruiter. They were both old men, when the officer in question sneeringly alluded to Dörfling’s origin. “True!” roared the hearty veteran, not a bit ashamed of the fact (the less perhaps that it was known to everybody),—“True! I have been a tailor, and have cut cloth; but harkye, the sword at my side is the instrument with which I shall cut the ears of those who are audacious enough to make of that fact a ground for mockery or reproach!” Well said, brave tailor! nobody raised a sneer at thy expense after that, I warrant! No wonder that at thy grave tailors, soldiers, and honest men yet repair, as to the shrine of a saint whose memory is worthy of respect. But if Germany has one, we have a hundred of such heroes. When the Spanish Armada was threatening our shores, the tailors were among the first to enrol themselves among the patriotic defenders of the country. They are said to have been mounted on mules, and, when intelligence was once brought to Queen Elizabeth,—intelligence as false as though it had come by Electric Telegraph,—that a brigade of tailors and their mules had been destroyed, “Let us be consoled,” said the royal lady, “we have lost neither man nor horse.” I may also again notice the fact, that, at the siege of Gibraltar, the brigade which did Elliott best service against the enemy consisted almost exclusively of tailors from London. Really the profession is overdone with heroes! It has its one in the navy, and of him I will now speak, though more briefly than of his predecessors. ADMIRAL HOBSON, THE NAVAL TAILOR. “Commend us to the Admiral, and say, The King will visit him, and bring health.” SHIRLEY: _Chabot_. In the reign of Queen Anne, in the pleasant village of Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight, there lived an honest villager, whose son he had apprenticed to a tailor in the not less pleasant insular locality of Niton. Young Hobson was here engaged at his humble craft, when he heard that a British fleet was passing the back of the Wight; and he went with his fellow-workmen to view that goodly sight. It was a spectacle which fired his youthful breast with naval ardour; and, abandoning his articles of indenture to serve the Queen under the articles of war, he proclaimed himself a volunteer, jumped into a boat, and was taken on board one of the ships of the fleet, where likely lads, such as he was, met with warm welcome and hard usage.