One of the Six Hundred: A Novel

I was just in the act of humming the above verse, when the following announcement was put into my hand"Regimental Orders.Head-quarters, Maidstone, December 31st. "As the regiment is to be held in readiness for foreign service in spring, captains of troops will report to Lieutenant and Adjutant Studhome, for the information of the commanding officer, on the state of the saddlery, the holsters and lance-buckets; and the horses must be all re-shod under the immediate inspection of the veterinary surgeon and Farrier-Sergeant Snaffles. "Leave of absence to the 31st proximo is granted to Lieutenant Newton Calderwood Norcliff, in consequence of his urgent private affairs." "Hah! this is what most concerns me," I exclaimed, as I read the foregoing, and then handed the order-book, a squat vellum-bound quarto, to the orderly-serjeant who was in waiting. "Any idea of where we are likely to go, sir?" he asked. "The East, of course." "So say the men in the barracks; for the present, good-bye, sir," said he, as he wheeled about on his spurred heel, and saluted; "I wish you a pleasant journey." "Thanks, Stapylton," said I; "and now to be off by the night train for London and the north. Ugh! the last night of December; I shall have a cold journey of it." Despatching my man, Willie Pitbladoof whom more hereafterto the mess-house to report that I should not dine there that evening, I proposed at once to start for home, resolved to make the most of the favour granted meleave between returns, as it is technically termed. I propose to give the story of my own adventures, my experiences of life, or autobiography (what you will); and this I shall do, in the face of a certain writer, who asserts, with some truth, doubtless, that she does not "believe that there was, or could be in the world, a wholly true, candid, and unreserved biography, revealing all the dispositions, or even, without exception, all the facts of any existence. Indeed," she adds, "the thing is next to impossible; since, in that case, the subject of the biography must be a man or woman without reserve, without delicacy, and without those secrets which are inevitable even to the most stainless spirit." With all due deference to this fair writer, I beg to hope that such a candid spirit may exist; and that, without violating the delicacy of this somewhat (externally) fastidious age on the one hand, and without prudish or hypocritical reserve on the other, I, Mr. Newton Norcliff, will relate the plain, unvarnished story of a cavalry subaltern's life during the stirring events of the last ten years. My regiment was a lancer one. I need not designate it further; though, by the way, it has always struck me as somewhat peculiar in our cavalry of the line, that while we have our Scottish corps, the famous old Greys, and no less than three Irish, we have not one English regiment, provincially designated as such. I despatched a note of thanks to the colonel, handed over my cattle to the care of my friend Jack Studhome, the adjutant, and had a hasty interview with Saunders M'Goldrick, our Scots paymasternot that I wish the reader to infer that he was my chief factor and reliance (heaven help those in a dragoon regiment who find him so!).

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