I once heard a story of a lieutenant in some regiment, who was honest, steady, and quiet, full of sterling qualities; but he was dull, reserved, religiously inclined, or less brilliant than his brother-officers. They laughed at him, and associated but little with him. He was well born, but poor, and without interest; so he remained without, in the cold shade, both as to promotion and the warmth and cheerfulness of friendship and society. But he never complained; he lived on and did his best. Then at last came the Crimean War. A battery was to be taken; and the guns were so well pointed at this particular regiment, which was the storming party, that they were forced to give way. But, in hopes of rallying his own company, this young fellow passed all his brother-officers with a laugh. He flung his shako before him, and, sword in hand, rushed through a breach into the battery, followed by his handful. They never came out again. At the mess that night there was not a man but who wished he had better understood his brother-officer. They now remembered a thousand good qualities and incidents that ought to have endeared him to them, and they vainly tried to recall any little kindness that they had shown him. All felt ashamed of the contempt with which they had treated one in every respect their superior. Of that stuff we are made, and when the occasion comes we will prove it. 1886. I was to have started, by Richard's orders, soon, but I got a telegram from him saying there was cholera, and that I could get no quarantine at Gibraltar, and should not be allowed to land. But I at once telegraphed to Sir John Adye, who was then commanding at Gibraltar, and asked if he would allow a Government boat to take me off the P. and O. and put me straight on the Marocco boat; and received a favourable answer, to my great relief. I wanted to get to Richard for our silver wedding. At last the business for which I was left behind permitted me to start, and I wished my dear father good-bye, as my husband had done; but, though I left with a great misgiving, I entertained a strong hope that I should see him again--as the doctors assured me I should. I went down to Gravesend, and embarked on one of the floating palaces, the P. and O. _Ballarat_. The Bay was bad, and I was delighted with the pluck of my Italian maid Lisa, who had never been at sea before. Her eyes got bigger and bigger as she looked through the closed porthole, and she kept saying, "There is such a big one (wave); we _must_ go down this time." She would hardly believe my laughing and saying, "Oh no, you won't! You will float like a duck over it in a minute--we always do that here." The amusing part was her scorn of the Triestines when she got back, when she used to say, "Sea! do you call _that_ a sea? Why, the waves are no bigger than the river in England."