would go to battle as simply as to afternoon tea, and get themselves
shot in some imperial cause as impersonally as their men.

There were large barracks in our neighborhood where one might have
glimpses of the intimate life of the troops, such as shirt-sleeved
figures smoking short pipes at the windows, or red coats hanging from
the sills, or sometimes a stately bear-skin dangling from a shutter by
its throat-latch. We were also near to the Chelsea Hospital, where
soldiering had come to its last word in the old pensioners pottering
about the garden-paths or sitting in the shade or sun. Wherever a red
coat appeared it had its honorable obsequy in the popular interest, and
if I might venture to sum up my impression of what I saw of soldiering
in London I should say that it keeps its romance for the spectator far
more than soldiering does in the Continental capitals, where it seems a
slavery consciously sad and clearly discerned. It may be that a glamour
clings to the English soldier because he has voluntarily enslaved
himself as a recruit, and has not been torn an unwilling captive from
his home and work, like the conscripts of other countries. On the same
terms our own military are romantic.




IV

THE DUN YEAR'S BRILLIANT FLOWER


I had thought--rather cheaply, as I now realize--of offering, as a
pendant for the scene of Fashion Meeting Itself in the Park on the