TRAITS OF TRAVEL; OR, TALES OF MEN AND CITIES. BY THE AUTHOR OF HIGH-WAYS AND BY-WAYS." SOLD BY COLLINS AND HANNAY, COLLINS AND CO., G. AND C. AND H. 1829. THE VETERAN. It was exactly ten years from the day on which I had last parted with my old acquaintance, Phil Hartigan, when I happened to arrive at the very spot where that parting interview took place. This was a fourth-rate town in one of the northern departments of France, in the very heart of the coal country close 'on the borders of Belgium, where Captain Hartigan had been cantoned, for some time previous to the final removal of the British army of occupation. with My acquaintance with him commenced at Valenciennes, of the garrison of which place his regiment formed a part; but after about a year's continuance there, he had been detached, his company, to the little town in question, and to his very great discomfiture. And well he might be annoyed at the change-for never was a military man in pleasanter foreign quarters, as far as English military society in its best sense could make them pleasant, than in that garrison at the time I allude to. In this, I am sure to be borne out, by the memories of all who were there during 1815 and 1816, and who have one and all, I'll be bound, often thought of the balls, the dinners, the private plays, the gayety and good fellowship, that ran through all the seasons in succession. It was early in the summer of the last of those years that I rode over, accompanied by two others, to pass a day with their old comrade, and allay, for never so brief a space, the discontent which broke out, even in the invitation that led to our visit. I have never forgotten the last sentence of poor Phil's note "I'm an unfortunate devil: I seem to be stuck in this damned morass for life and death; I am sure it will kill me, so come over like honest fellows as you ought to be, and give me one pleasant day on this side of the grave." I have called this a sentence: it was so, certainly, a sentence of death; but as to any thing like grammatical division, punctuation, or such like pedantries, Phil Hartigan knew nothing of, or, knowing, despised them. He was a very clever fellow for all that, and had received a fair education, (as the phrase goes,) for |