Well, time rolled on; I had doubled the Cape of Good Hope, sweet sixteen, and the ocean of life and adventure lay before me. I stood five feet nine inches in my stockings, and possessed all the aspirations common to my age. “Frank, my love,” one day said my mother to me, at the conclusion of breakfast, “I have good news for you; that most benevolent of men, Mr. Versanket, has complied with my application, and given me an infantry cadetship for you; here,” she continued, “is his letter, read it, and ever retain, as I trust you will, a lively sense of his goodness.” I eagerly seized the letter, and read the contents with a kind of ecstasy. It expressed sympathy in my mothers difficulties, and an invitation to me to come to London and take advantage of his offer. I will not dwell on the parting scenes. Suffice it to say, that I embraced those dear objects of my affection, many of whom I was never destined to embrace again, and bid a sorrowful long adieu to the parental roof. I arrived in the great metropolis, and prepared for my outfit and departure. Having completed the former—sheets, ducks, jeans, and gingerbread, tobacco to bribe old Neptune, brandy to mollify the sailors, and all _et ceteras_, according to the most approved list of Messrs. Welsh and Stalker—nought remained but to pass the India House, an ordeal which I was led to view with an indefinable dread. From whom I received the information I now forget, though it was probably from some one of that mischievous tribe of jokers, who love to sport with the feelings of youth; but I was told that it was absolutely necessary that I should learn by heart, as an indispensable preliminary to passing, the “Articles of War and Mutiny Act,” then forming one volume. What was my state of alarm and despondency as I handled that substantial yellow-backed tome, and reflected on the task I had to perform of committing its whole contents to memory in the brief space of one week! It haunted me in my dreams, and the thought of it, sometimes crossing my mind whilst eating, almost suspended the power of swallowing. I carried it about with me whereever I went, applying to it with desperate determination whenever a leisure moment, of which I had very few, would admit; but what I forced into my sensorium one moment, the eternal noise and racket of London drove out of it the next. To cut a long story short, the day arrived, “the all-important day,” big with my fate. I found myself waiting in the India House, preparatory to appearing before the directors, and, saving the first two or three clauses, the “Articles of War” were to me as a sealed volume. I was in despair; to be disgraced appeared inevitable. At last came the awful summons, and I entered the apartment, where, at a large table covered with green cloth, sat the “potent, grave, and reverend signiors,” who were to decide my fate. One of them, a very benevolent-looking old gentleman, with a powdered head,