In the furniture of the tent, as in the canvas thereof,
there was that mournful suggestion of better days which is held to be a
virtue in furnished apartments. But over all there hovered that sense of
well-scrubbed cleanliness which comes from the touch of a native military
servant. An indulgence in this habit of rubbing and scrubbing was indeed
accountable for much dilapidation; for that silent little Ghoorka man,
Ben Abdi, had rubbed and scrubbed many things not intended by an
ingenious camp-furnisher for such treatment. James Edward Makerstone Agar
was engaged in the compilation of a diary, which volume there is reason
to believe is still preserved in a woman's jewel drawer.
It has not run through any editions--indeed, no compositor's finger has
up to this time defiled its pages. This, in fact, was one of those
literary works, ground slowly out from the millstones of the brain, of
which the style fails to please the taste of the present day. To catch
the fancy of a slang-loving and thoughtless generation the writer must
throw off his works.
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