Demerara makes a pretty episode of the battle. I haven't seen it--if
it's possible to look on it: but I hear it is flexible, of a vulgar
appearance in repose, Jove's lightning at one time, the thong of AEacus
at another. Observe Dartrey marching off to the Station, for the purpose
of laying his miraculous weapon across the shoulders of a son of Mars,
who had offended. But we have his name, my dear Victor! His name,
Simeon?--Worrell; a Major Worrell: his offence being probably, that he
obtained military instruction in the Service, and left it at his
convenience, for our poor patch and tatter British Army to take in his
place another young student, who'll grow up to do similarly. And
Dartrey, we assume, is off to stop that system. You behold Sir Dartrey
twirling the weapon in preparatory fashion; because he is determined we
shall have an army of trained officers instead of infant amateurs heading
heroic louts. Not a thought of Beer in Dartrey!--always unpatriotic, you
'll say. Plato entreats his absent mistress to fix eyes on a star: eyes
on Beer for the uniting of you English! I tell you no poetic fiction.
Seeing him on his way, thus terribly armed, and knowing his intent,
Venus, to shield a former favourite servant of Mars, conjured the most
diverting of interventions, in the shape of a young woman in a poke-
bonnet, and Skepsey, her squire, marching with a dozen or so, informing
bedevilled mankind of the hideousness of our hymnification when it is not
under secluding sanction of the Edifice, and challengeing criticism; and
that was hard by, and real English, in the form of bludgeons, wielded by
a battalion of the national idol Bungay Beervat's boys; and they fell
upon the hymners. Here you fill in with pastoral similes. They struck
the maid adored by Skepsey. And that was the blow which slew them!
Our little man drove into the press with a pair of fists able to do their
work. A valiant skiff upon a sea of enemies, he was having it on the
nob, and suddenly the Demerara lightened. It flailed to thresh. Enough.
to say, brains would have come. The Bungays made a show of fight. No