It is an excellent quality in a soldier not to know when he is beaten, but whether blind obstinacy will succeed when it influences the rulers and destinies of a great nation, is more than questionable. Pondering these things, I remembered how, four thousand years ago, a stiff-necked generation were brought to their senses and on their knees. It was on the morning after the visit of the Dark Angel, when Egypt awoke, and found not a house in which there was not one dead. If such fearful waste of life goes on here, with no decisive or final advantage on either side attained, that ancient curse may not be long in recurring.
I rose when the sun ought to have risen, on the following morning, intending to admire the famous harbor which Americans love to compare with the Neapolitan Bay. But long before we reached the Narrows,
"A blinding mist came up and hid the land As far as eye could see."
Very soon we were buried in fog, dense and Cimmerian, as ever brooded over our own Thames or the Righi panorama. More and more slowly the paddles turned, till they stopped altogether. It was dangerous to advance, ever so cautiously, when the keenest sight could not pierce half a ship's length ahead. So there we lay at anchor for weary hours, listening to the church-bells chiming drowsily through the heavy air, till an enterprising tug ventured out for the mails, and sent another for the relief of the passengers.
The custom-house officers were not troublesome, and I was soon at the Brevoort House, the Parisian Pylades still faithfully following my fortunes. I was far from entreating him to leave me; landing utterly alone in a strange land, one does not lightly cast aside companionship. For reasons easily understood, I had declined to avail myself of many proffered letters of introduction to New Yorkers.
That lonely feeling did not last long: the first object which caught my eye on the steps of the Brevoort House was an honest English face--a face I have known, and liked right well, these dozen years and more. There stood "the Colonel" (any Ch. Ch. or Rifle Brigade man will recognize the _sobriquet_), beaming upon the world in general with the placid cheerfulness that no changes of time or place or fortune seem able to alter, looking just as comfortable and thoroughly "at home" as he did, steering Horniblow to victory at Brixworth. I had heard that my old friend was on his way to England to join the Staff College, but had never reckoned on such a successful "nick" as this. By my faith, my turns of luck beyond the Atlantic were not so frequent as to excuse forgetfulness, when they did befall.