United States or Switzerland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
About twenty yards down the hill the horses belonging to a whole Battery had been struck by a shell. About a dozen of them lay dead where they had been standing. The story had been told of how one of the Subalterns of the other Company had left his hole, rifle in hand, in the middle of a bombardment, to put the wounded animals out of their agony.
Numerous subalterns were abroad, lively for strife, and bright with the signal of their readiness. An icy wind blew down from the Alps, whitening the housetops and the ways, but every street, torso, and piazza was dense with loungers, as on a summer evening; the clamour of a skirmish anywhere attracted streams of disciplined rioters on all sides; it was the holiday of rascals.
To him it has been indifferent whether, at the moment, the fortune seemed good or evil, in the end always it was good. As a boy officer, when other subalterns were playing polo, and at the Gaiety Theatre attending night school, he ran away to Cuba and fought with the Spaniards. For such a breach of military discipline, any other officer would have been court-martialled.
"And where might that be, sir?" asked Mr. Wharton, conceiving it necessary to say something. "The guardroom," said the trooper, dryly. "What is the offense of poor Birch?" asked Miss Peyton, handing the dragoon a fourth dish of coffee. "Poor!" cried the captain. "If he is poor, King George is a bad paymaster." "Yes, indeed," said one of the subalterns, "his Majesty owes him a dukedom."
She met him constantly at the Club, and he never failed to come to her side there and by some means known only to himself to banish the crowd of subalterns who were wont to gather round her. He asserted no claim, but the claim existed and was mutely recognized. He never spoke to her intimately. He never attempted to pass the bounds of ordinary friendship.
"Your honor," said the other, rising, and giving the customary salute. "You have been told it is my intention to send you down among the Thousand Islands for the next month. All the old subalterns have had their tours of duty in that quarter all that I like to trust at least; and it has at length come to your turn.
In this shameful day, one colonel, one captain, three subalterns, and ten privates were killed: one lieutenant colonel, one captain, and one hundred and fifty-seven privates were missing. The unsoldierly conduct displayed on this occasion was not attributable to a want of personal courage, but to other causes.
The castle of a great feudatory of the early Middle Ages, whether north or south of the Loire, in Austria or in Franconia, is like a miniature copy of some garrison town in barbarous countries: there is an enormous numerical preponderance of men over women; for only the chiefs in command, the overlord, and perhaps one or two of his principal kinsmen or adjutants, are permitted the luxury of a wife; the rest of the gentlemen are subalterns, younger sons without means, youths sent to learn their military duty and the ways of the world: a whole pack of men without wives, without homes, and usually without fortune.
The thunder of the house on the other side of the curtain was enough to disconcert a youngster such as he was; nor have the subalterns of Croat regiments a very signal reputation for efficiency in the Austrian Service. Vittoria stood among her supporters apart; pale, and 'only very thirsty, as she told the enthusiastic youths who pressed near her, and implored her to have no fear.
"And now," he said gaily, as he stood up, "the mask!" He did not see the change for he seemed to have no suspicion but as he rose, the door of the room behind him became fringed with grinning faces. Payton, the two youths who had leant from the window of the inn and who had carried his words, a couple of older officers, half a dozen subalterns, all were there and one or two civilians.
Word Of The Day