The mess fare was simple; but even had it been much more so, compensation would have been afforded by the society one met there. From the commanding officer downward, one and all were a refined, intellectual set of men, among whom I spent a most agreeable time, the pleasurable recollection of which is marred only by the afterthought of how many perished soon after in the Mutiny. “Heroic Willoughby,” of Delhi fame, was there,—all, all were good men and true! As my sphere of duties widened to embrace the civil department also, the place grew upon me, and I hoped to remain there for a long time. Looking back, I often wish it had been so decreed! Men who had resided for some time in India thought differently, they longed for the time when their regiments should be ordered back. And their wish was soon to be gratified: they returned just in time to get entangled in the outbreak, in which the majority of my old comrades were shot down by the men they trusted. I was caught in the same trap, but escaped by the skin of my teeth. Circumstances unfortunately compelled me to remain on for many years; but I place it on record that from that time forward I loathed the country and the altered mode of Government, and I maintain, without much fear of contradiction, that under John Company’s _Raj_, Europeans and natives were far happier than they have ever been since, or ever will be. At Prome there certainly was a dearth of those amusements to which the majority of officers had been accustomed; but this was the case at most Burmese stations. The band and the mess were all that remained. There was very little sport; and libraries and billiard-tables were inadmissible, as part and parcel of campaigning equipage; the ladies too—where were they? In its palmy days of yore, before the great convulsion, India was celebrated for its sociability, for the brotherly feelings that knit together Europeans of every denomination, and for the deference shown them by the population at large. In every walk of life there is the hard lesson of how to take the good and bad together; and there is some justification of the way in which the officers yearned after their accustomed dances, picnics and hunting, in the fact that history has proved, in the most unequivocal manner, that the man who shines in the drawing-room and field makes the best officer under any conditions. He possesses more self-reliance, clearer judgment, and greater fertility of resource, not to speak of better-tuned nerves, in an emergency, than the more modern bookworm, whose mind has too often been developed at the expense of his body. If the human machinery is to work efficiently, bodily and mental training must go hand in hand, and this is especially necessary in the case of the soldier. The pendulum with us is always swinging to extremes, and the present tendency is to train the one, and leave the other to look after itself.