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It may be traced back so far at least as modern warfare is concerned to Sir Francis Drake's famous appreciation in the year of the Armada. This memorable despatch was written when an acute difference of opinion had arisen as to whether it were better to hold our fleet back in home waters or to send it forward to the coast of Spain. The enemy's objective was very uncertain.
Still both were extremely desirable, if not indispensable, to men who had the prospect of many hours' hard work before them; and Captain Truck's first impulse was to despatch a boat to the ship for supplies. This intention was reluctantly abandoned, however, on account of the threatening appearance of the weather.
In Nova Scotia a despatch from Lord Glenelg brought to a close in 1838 the agitation which had been going on for years for a separation of the executive from the legislative functions of the legislative council, and the formation of two distinct bodies in accordance with the existing English system.
So full of assurance was he, that he triumphed over death; and so even in his spirit to the last, as if death were hardly worth notice, or a mention: recommending to some of us with him, the despatch and dispersion of an epistle just before given forth by him to the churches of Christ throughout the world, and his own books: but, above all, Friends; and of all Friends, those in Ireland and America, twice over, saying, "Mind poor Friends in Ireland and America."
"I always laugh when I think of their expedition to Amiens. They had me between them, Each had fully five hundred gentlemen with him, armed to the teeth, and all going to despatch me, like Concini; but the great Vitry was not there. They very quietly let me talk for an hour with them about the hunt and the Fete Dieu, and neither of them dared make a sign to their cut-throats.
. . . to the right a violent artillery bombardment has been in progress. ACTUAL EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH. No. 2 Platoon of the Royal Blanks was cooking its breakfast with considerable difficulty and an astonishing amount of cheerfulness when the first shell fell in front of their firing trench.
It being necessary to go alongside the coal-wharves in order to replenish the bunkers of the Negros, orders were given that rat-guards circular pieces of tin about the size of a barrel-top should be fixed to our hawsers, thus making it difficult, if not impossible, for rats to invade the ship by that route, while sailors armed with clubs were posted along the landward rail to despatch any rodents that might succeed in gaining the deck.
"What shall we do?" asked Mrs. Leighton, helplessly. "Let him go away whoever they are," said Alma. Another and more peremptory ring forbade them refuge in this simple expedient. "Oh, dear! what shall we do? Perhaps it's a despatch." The conjecture moved Alma to no more than a rigid stare. "I shall not go," she said.
It appeared that the envoys on reaching Paris, in October, 1797, had been denied an official interview, but that three persons, whose names were clouded under the initials X. Y. Z., had approached them with vague suggestions of loans and advances; these were finally crystallized into a demand for fifty thousand pounds "for the pockets of the Directory." The despatch described one conversation.
A gallant boy, specially named in the despatch, he had such aptitude that at sixteen, as he told me himself, he wore an epaulette on the left shoulder the uniform of a lieutenant at that time; and a contemporary assured me that in handling a ship he was the smartest officer of the deck he had ever known.
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