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Updated: June 14, 2025
One day, passing Buckingham Palace, I came on a footguard on duty in one of the little sentry boxes just outside the walls. He did not look as though he were alive. He looked as though he had been stuffed and mounted by a most expert taxidermist. From under his bearskin shako and from over his brazen chin-strap his face stared out unwinking and solemn and barren of thought.
Paris failed to wound his enemy, but Menelaus' dart pierced Paris' armour; he followed it up with a blow of his sword which shivered to pieces in his hand. He then caught Paris' helmet and dragged him off towards the Greek army; but Aphrodite saved her favourite, for she loosed the chin-strap and bore Paris back to Helen in Troy.
There was a coarse flannel shirt with a leather stock, a pair of woollen socks, black pantaloons with a line of red piping, spatterdashes, a tunic such as I've described with pipe-clayed belt and crossbelt and last of all a great japanned shako mounted with a brass plate and chin-strap and a scarlet-and-white cockade like a shaving-brush.
Each man had shaved and got his hair cut, his hat set straight on his head, and the regimental badge in proper position over the idle chin-strap. Pocket-flaps and tunics were buttoned, water-bottles and haversacks hung straight, the tops of the latter in line with the bayonet rings, and entrenching tool handles were scrubbed clean my mate and I had spent much soap on ours the night before.
Well, as I peered through the darkness, I suddenly saw a great, tall man skip into this belt of daylight, and then out again into the darkness at the further end. My word, I gave such a start that my shako nearly broke its chin-strap!
Wallie's misgivings returned to him and Pinkey rolled his eyes eloquently when they saw "the man who understood horses" trying to bridle with the chin-strap and noted that he had saddled without a blanket. Mr. Stott laughed inconsequently when the mistake was pointed out to him and declared that it was an oversight merely. "Now, if you will get me something to stand on I am ready to mount."
"I knew it was something insulting," said Martha with an injured sniff. The only concessions Martha would make to the latter-day craze of women for youthfulness were buying a foolish chin-strap of a beauty quack and consulting him as to whether, if her hair continued to gray, she would better take to peroxide or to henna.
I searched here and searched there, until at last I chanced to find myself in front of a mirror, where I stood with my eyes staring and my jaw as far dropped as the chin-strap of my shako would allow. Four buttons of my pelisse were open, and it did not need me to put my hand up to know that my precious papers were gone. Oh! the depth of cunning that lurks in a woman's heart.
But through ut all, up an' down, an' down an' up, wint Ould Pummeloe an' little Jhansi all we cud see av the baby, undher a dead man's helmut wid the chin-strap swingin' about her little stummick up an' down wid the wather an' fwhat brandy there was.
A second shelf held a shiny red-and-black peg-top, a black wooden snake beside its lead-colored pipe-like case; a tin soldier in an English uniform red coat, and pill-box cap held on by a chin-strap; a second uniformed tin man who turned somersaults, but in repose stood upon his head; a black dog on wheels, with great floppy ears; and a half-dozen downy ducklings acquired at Easter.
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