Besides, I tried—and how ingenious is self-deception—I tried to find arguments in support of my determination totally different from the reasons which governed me. I affected to fear climate, and to dread the effect of the tropics upon my health. It may do very well, thought I, for men totally destitute of better prospects; with neither talent, influence or powerful connexion, to roast their cheeks at Sierra Leone, or suck a sugar-cane at St. Lucia. But that you, Harry Lorrequer, should waste your sweetness upon planters’ daughters—that have only to be known, to have the world at your feet! The thing is absurd, and not to be thought of! Yes, said I half aloud—we read in the army list, that Major A. is appointed to the 50th, and Capt. B. to the 12th; but how much more near the truth would it be, to say—“That His Majesty, in consideration of the distinguished services of the one, has been graciously pleased to appoint him to—a case of blue and collapsed cholera, in India; and also, for the bravery and gallant conduct of the other, in his late affair with the ‘How-dow-dallah Indians,’ has promoted him to the—yellow fever now devastating and desolating Jamaica.” How far my zeal for the service might have carried me on this point, I know not; for I was speedily aroused from my musings by the loud tramp of feet upon the stairs, and the sound of many well-known voices of my brother officers, who were coming to visit me. “So, Harry, my boy,” said the fat major as he entered; “is it true we are not to have the pleasure of your company to Jamaica this time?” “He prefers a pale face, it seems, to a black one; and certainly, with thirty thousand in the same scale, the taste is excusable.” “But, Lorrequer,” said a third, “we heard that you had canvassed the county on the Callonby interest. Why, man, where do you mean to pull up?” “As for me,” lisped a large-eyed, white-haired ensign of three months’ standing, “I think it devilish hard, old Carden didn’t send ME down there, too, for I hear there are two girls in the family. Eh, Lorrequer?” Having with all that peculiar bashfulness such occasions are sure to elicit, disclaimed the happiness my friends so clearly ascribed to me, I yet pretty plainly let it be understood that the more brilliant they supposed my present prospects to be, the more near were they to estimate them justly. One thing certainly gratified me throughout. All seemed rejoiced at my good fortune, and even the old Scotch paymaster made no more caustic remark than that he “wad na wonder if the chiel’s black whiskers wad get him made governor of Stirling Castle before he’d dee.” Should any of my most patient listeners to these my humble confessions, wonder either here, or elsewhere, upon what very slight foundations I built these my “Chateaux en Espagne,” I have only one answer—“that from my boyhood I have had a taste for florid architecture, and would rather put up with any inconvenience of ground, than not build at all.”