War Office authorities that instead of quarrelling with my dog for
talking his own language, they should train their sergeants to use
English.

They would not see it. Unpleasantness was in the air, and, living
where I did at the time, I thought it best to part with Columbus. I
could see what the War Office was driving at, and I did not desire
that responsibility for the inefficiency of the British Army should
be laid at my door.

Some twenty years ago we, in London, were passing through a riotous
period, and a call was made to law-abiding citizens to enrol
themselves as special constables. I was young, and the hope of
trouble appealed to me more than it does now. In company with some
five or six hundred other more or less respectable citizens, I found
myself one Sunday morning in the drill yard of the Albany Barracks.
It was the opinion of the authorities that we could guard our homes
and protect our wives and children better if first of all we learned
to roll our "eyes right" or left at the given word of command, and to
walk with our thumbs stuck out. Accordingly a drill sergeant was
appointed to instruct us on these points. He came out of the
canteen, wiping his mouth and flicking his leg, according to rule,
with the regulation cane. But, as he approached us, his expression
changed. We were stout, pompous-looking gentlemen, the majority of
us, in frock coats and silk hats. The sergeant was a man with a
sense of the fitness of things. The idea of shouting and swearing at
us fell from him: and that gone there seemed to be no happy medium
left to him. The stiffness departed from his back. He met us with a
defferential attitude, and spoke to us in the language of social
intercourse.