The early part of their evenings was generally spent in witticisms and tales; and, in conclusion, by way of a lullaby, some long-winded fellow commenced one of those everlasting ditties in which soldiers and sailors delight so much--they are all to the same tune, and the subject, (if one may judge by the tenor of the first ninety-eight verses,) was battle, murder, or sudden death; but I never yet survived until the catastrophe, although I have often, to attain that end, stretched my waking capacities to the utmost. I have sometimes heard a fresh arrival from England endeavour to astonish their unpolished ears with "the white blossomed sloe," or some such refined melody, but it was invariably coughed down as instantaneously as if it had been the sole voice of a conservative amidst a select meeting of radicals. The wit and the humour of the rascals were amusing beyond any thing--and to see them next morning drawn up as mute as mice, and as stiff as lamp-posts, it was a regular puzzler to discover on which _post_ the light had shone during the bye-gone night, knowing, as we did, that there were at least a hundred original pages for Joe Miller, encased within the head-pieces then before us. Their stories, too, were quite unique--one, (an Englishman,) began detailing the unfortunate termination of his last matrimonial speculation. He had got a pass one day to go from Shorncliffe to Folkestone, and on the way he fell in with one of the finest young women "as ever he seed! my eye, as we say in Spain, if she was not a _wapper_; with a pair of cheeks like cherries, and shanks as clean as my ramrod, she was bounding over the downs like a young colt, and faith, if she would not have been with her heels clean over my head if I had'n't caught her up and demanded a parley. O, Jem, man, but she was a nice creature! and all at once got so fond of me too, that there was no use waiting; and so we settled it all that self same night, and on the next morning we were regularly spliced, and I carries her home to a hut which Corporal Smith and I hired behind the barrack for eighteen pence a week. Well! I'll be blessed if I was'n't as happy as a shilling a day and my wife could make me for two whole days; but the next morning, just before parade, while Nancy was toasting a slice of tommy[B] for our breakfast, who should darken our door but the carcase of a great sea marine, who began blinking his goggle eyes like an owl in a gooseberry bush, as if he did'n't see nothing outside on them; when all at once Nancy turned, and, my eye, what a squall she set up as she threw the toast in the fire, and upset my tinful of crowdy, while she twisted her arms round his neck like a vice, and began kissing him at no rate, he all the time blubbering, like a bottle-nose in a shoal, about flesh of his flesh, and bones of his bones, and all the like o' that. Well! says I to myself, says I, this is very queer any how--and