Instances of this love of dictation, and the determination to lay down the law on all subjects, whether military or not, were constantly occurring, not seldom to the discredit of the General's scholarship. One day he downfaced young Arnold on a point on which the 'sub' was far ahead of him. The youngster was saying something about platinum to some of the other young lads, who, though they may have been well up in Euclid, and in fortifications, and could give you back accurately all that they had learned about 'momentum, velocity, and the square of distances whether inverse or not,' were not quite so well up in physics or chemical analysis. In reply to one of these young gentlemen who had been asking questions about platinum, Arnold stated that it was an elementary substance, adding that it was one of the sixty-three such substances. 'Hulloa!' cried the General. 'What's that you say, Arnold--sixty-three elements? I fancy your elementary education has been rather neglected, my lad. Don't you know, having so lately come from school, that there are only four elements--air, earth, fire, and water? Why, they knew that as far back as the days of Aristotle!' Poor Arnold, not knowing the General's ways (he had only just joined), unconsciously replied: 'They don't teach that nowadays, General.' One of the young men who had been at Sandhurst with him whispered Arnold not to say anything; but he, knowing no reason why he should be silent, replied as I have stated, and thereby drew on himself the extreme anger and indignation of the General. 'Do you mean seriously to tell me that, sir? Do you mean to say that the small men of these days pretend to be wiser than Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest philosopher the world ever produced? He never said that there were sixty-three elements, and you, a youth not twenty, just free from the pedagogue's ferula--you pretend to be wiser than that great man, and all your seniors beside.' Arnold was going to say something, when luckily the General stopped him with a violent gesture and angry visage, saying: 'Go home, sir, and if you learn nothing else, learn a little respect for your superiors.' Poor Arnold was kindly hustled out of the mess-house where this little episode occurred, lest, as one of his friends from the Land of Cakes said, 'waur should come of it.' The General seemed to be partial to Aristotle and his philosophy, although he was not able to read the easiest class-book in the original language. He had, however, made acquaintance with the famous old Greek through the medium of translations, and was ever ready to do battle in his defence.