HOW AN ADMIRAL TOOK ONE GENTLEMAN FOR ANOTHER, AND WAS TOLD THE DAY
OF THE MONTH.

Next morning, almost before the sun was up, all Troy was in
possession of the news; and in Troy all that is personal has a public
interest. It is this local spirit that marks off the Trojan from all
other minds.

In consequence long before ten o'clock struck, it was clear that
some popular movement was afoot; and by half-past eleven the road
to the railway station was crowded with Trojans of all sorts and
conditions--boatmen, pilots, fishermen, sailors out of employ, the
local photographer, men from the ship-building yards, makers of
ship's biscuit, of ropes, of sails, chandlers, block and pump
manufacturers, loafers--representatives, in short, of all the staple
industries: women with baskets--women with babies, women with both,
even a few farmers in light gigs with their wives, or in carts with
their families, a sprinkling from Penpoodle, across the harbour--high
and low, Church and Dissent, with children by the hundred. Some even
proposed to ring the church bells and fire the cannon at the
harbour's mouth; but the ringers and artillerymen preferred to come
and see the sight. As it was, the "George" floated proudly from the
church tower, and the Fife and Drum Temperance Band stood ready at
the corner of East Street. All Troy, in fact, was on tip-toe.

Meanwhile, as few in the crowd possessed Burke or Debrett, the
information that passed from mouth to mouth was diverse and peculiar,
but, as was remarked by a laundress in the crowd to a friend: "He may