who never dared to strengthen his supplications by a straightforward gaze; he is no longer a wanderer and homeless vagrant on the face of an earth whose spring-time blossoms had no message for him or his kind. He has forgotten already the cold nights passed in the streets or in the parks; the questionable benefit of a troubled sleep in some frowsy ten-cent lodging-house; the pitiful struggle, reversed day after day, to obtain enough food to keep soul and body together. For the rest of his life he doubtless counts on being beyond the reach of actual want. He will be cared for by some of our benevolent societies and received into some charitable institution where the balance of his chequered life will be quietly spent, undisturbed by thoughts of a past which had nothing in it worthy of regret. That man on the veranda is an old soldier. Like most of his class, he delights in nothing so much as to gather around him a little crowd of patient and interested listeners. He still cherishes a fine CONTEMPT FOR CIVILIANS, slightly modified by the present exigencies of his condition, which involves certain obligations to the despised class, in the way of tobacco and such like minor accommodations. He has been in India, Afghanistan, Abyssinia, Zululand, and last, but not least, the Curragh of Kildare. Curiously enough, it is of this last that his reminiscences are most lively, and its recollections are evidently cherished more lovingly than those of foreign lands. If he tells you anything about these last, you need not hope to hear much of unfamiliar customs, of strange sights, of hair-breadth ’scapes; your old soldier is seldom a great observer or a graphic reciter of stirring events. Barrack-room pranks, guard-room escapades, and long dialogues with officers, in which the narrator invariably comes out ahead, are the staple of his talk. His wooden leg does not seem to cause him a moment’s trouble, and he tilts it up on an adjacent chair as jauntily as if it were a souvenir of Isandhula, instead of a legacy from a drunken brawl in front of a Lombard street shanty. It is to be feared that this ancient warrior is a bit of a fraud; but he is such a light-hearted, garrulous, transparently mendacious old party that one is not inclined to be too hard on his shortcomings. This old man whom you saw move into a chair a minute ago is suffering from no specific disease. Behind the tightly drawn skin can be plainly discerned the lineaments of the fleshless skull. As he sits his eyes are the only features that save the face from being a perfect likeness of that of a corpse. When he moved to this seat his movements reminded you of a very jerky automaton, so stiff were his limbs and so wooden his body. I do not know one fact about the history of this old fellow in his shabby garments, but certain I am that if it were skilfully treated there would be MORE LESSONS TO BE DERIVED