CHAPTER I The contest for responsible government which was carried on in all the provinces of British North America for so many years resembled in some of its features a modern battle, where the field of operations is so wide that it is impossible for a general to cover it with his eye or to keep control of all the movements of his subordinates. In such a case, everything depends on the ability of the... more...

CHAPTER I ON ACTIVE SERVICE "Four o'clock mornin', sah; bugle him go for revally." Dudley Wilmshurst, Second Lieutenant of the Nth West African Regiment, threw off the light coverings, pulled aside the mosquito curtains, and sat upon the edge of his cot, hardly able to realise that Tari Barl, his Haussa servant, had announced the momentous news. Doubtful whether his senses were not... more...

WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS, AND OF SCOTLAND. Notwithstanding the shortness of their days, the bitterness of their frosts, and the fury of their storms, December and January are merry months. First comes old Christmas, shaking his hoary locks, belike, in the shape of snow-drift, and laughing, well-pleased, beneath his crown of mistletoe, over the smoking sirloin and the savoury goose. There is... more...

"Their ends as various as the roads they takeIn journeying through life." There is no class of men to whom the memory turns with more complacency, or more frequently, than to those who "taught the young idea how to shoot." There may be a few tyrants of the birch, who never inspired a feeling save fear or hatred; yet their number is but few, and I would say that the schoolmaster is abroad... more...

The gloom of a boisterous winter evening was settling over one of the wild, inhospitable tracts which lie to the north of the St Lawrence. The earth, far as the eye could reach, was covered, to the depth of many feet, by a continuous sheet of frozen snow; over which the bellying clouds, heavily charged with the materials of a fresh storm, hung in terrible array, fold beyond fold, as they descended on... more...

In the year 1785, a young and beautiful woman, whose dress and features bespoke her to be a native of Spain, was observed a few miles beyond Ponteland, on the road which leads to Rothbury. She appeared faint and weary; dimness was deepening over the lustre of her dark eyes, and their glance bespoke anxious misery. Her raiment was of the finest silk; but time had caused its colour to fade; and it hung... more...

Thirty years ago, there dwelt an old man named Simon Cockburn, who followed the avocations of parish teacher and precentor. Every Saturday afternoon, after he had washed his hands from the labours of the week, he went down to the public-house of the village in which he dwelt, and took his seat by the parlour window or fire (according as it was summer or winter), to read the newspaper, and see, as he... more...

There is no feeling more strongly or more generally implanted in the human breast, than man's love for the place of his nativity. The shivering Icelander sees a beauty, that renders them pleasant, in his mountains of perpetual snow; and the sunburned Moor discovers a loveliness in his sultry and sandy desert. The scenes of our nativity become implanted on our hearts like the memory of undying... more...

How far the term, "A Leveller," is provincial, or confined to the Borders, I am not certain; for before I had left them, to become as a pilgrim on the earth, the phrase had fallen into disuse, and the events, or rather the cause which brought it into existence, had passed away. But, twenty-five or even twenty years ago, in these parts, there was no epithet more familiar to the lips of every... more...

On the banks of the Tweed, and about half a mile above where the Whitadder flows into it on the opposite side, there is a small and singular cave. It is evidently not an excavation formed by nature, but the work of man's hands. To the best of my recollection, it is about ten feet square, and in the midst of it is a pillar or column, hewn out of the old mass, and reaching from the floor to the... more...