Directly the probe made itself felt, that right leg was drawn up till the knee almost touched the nose of the patient, when, the pain becoming unbearable, that leg, to which I was still clinging, shot out straight, and, striking me in the chest, sent me, like a pellet from a catapult, flying across the ward, greatly to the merriment of the assembled doctors and nurses. Never, I say, under any circumstances, unless you are a Hercules, undertake, unaided, to hold--_the other_ leg. In these rambling reminiscences I wish rather to give to the reader a rough _résumé_ of some few of my experiences than make any attempt at an abbreviated story of my life. Thus it is I pass in rapid review such incidents as in accidental succession present themselves. Indeed, as I write, I am reminded, by the snarls and contention for a bone of several dogs in the street below, of the Fosse Commune at Erzeroum, a deep entrenchment across which those who would from any point enter that grimy Oriental city have to pass on rough wooden bridges. [Illustration: "WAR, PESTILENCE, AND FAMINE."] There must be some Eastern sentiment which necessitates the Turks of Anatolia being more or less in touch with the dead--otherwise why those mangy man-eaters (no, not tigers, but half savage dogs) which prowl about o' nights in the byways of Erzeroum, or scratch up in the graveyards, as they too often do, all that remains of poor humanity, which, in this part of the world, is but thinly and lightly covered with mother earth? The backs of these scavengers, raw, and sometimes bleeding, tell too plainly the nature of their calling, since they suffer from a peculiar scurvy so induced. When the commissariat is low, they go further afield, even to that cordon of corruption outside the place, where vultures, hawks, owls, and other birds of prey fight or forgather with wolves and such like four-footed adventurers, and where, though metaphorically the man-eater takes a back seat, he still picks up some loathsome trifles--the _menu_ is not perhaps so choice as in his own graveyards, but the supply is plentiful enough in all conscience--everything corruptible, from a dead cat to a dead camel, finding a last resting-place somewhere within that seething circle. Hark! Do you hear the thunder of the guns in the _Devé Boyun_ Pass yonder? Do you see the smoke mingling with the fleeting clouds in the far distance? How complete a picture this--could you see it as I do now in my mind's eye--of "war, pestilence, and famine!" It's a far cry from Anatolia to Bulgaria, from Erzeroum to the Russian lines round about Plevna; but such a flight to pen and pencil on the plains of paper-land is nothing. Thus do we now, on the wings of fancy, find ourselves at Porodim, in the Cossack camp, during Osman Pasha's stubborn resistance--where Conigsby, of _The Times_, and McGahan, of _The Daily News_, and many others, including myself, were later on sending home news or sketches, and awaiting developments.