'One of Us'. (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 Excerpt: ...some talk. The Omniscient gentleman has withdrawn disgusted. But we hear the Infallible is about to take us up, and send us a representative. It will be unnecessary to specify our position very particularly. We are in southern Europe, engaged in a species of guerilla warfare, and in what we believe to be a sacred cause. It is war on a small scale; and yet, owing perhaps to its peculiar and somewhat romantic origin, it has attracted general interest through England and the Continent, and foreign sympathy is almost entirely with us. Had it not been for this, our brave mountaineers would hardly have held out even in their rocky fastnesses. As it is, we have the strangest gifts from the oddest people. Within the last week, we have had five hundred pounds from a Nottinghamshire baronet; three hundred stand of arms from a south country duke; sixty gross of leaden medals from some Italian shrine, whose purposes, I fear, will be perverted by the melting of them down into bullets; and five dozen of Davis's three-pound hunting saddles, despatched with "all good wishes from Susan Gazelle Higgs of London." These were issued this morning to the men of my troop, and the perplexity and trouble which her wellmeant present has brought with it, might move that good lady to tears. The saddles of the country go on either way, and the natural result is, that as many as not have been put on hind before. As a relative of one of the benefactors (not Susan Gazelle), I have received a commission, the money value of which is precisely that of the paper on which it is written, and no more. Yet it has been invaluable to me. Nothing could be better calculated to drive away the morbid imaginings of a brain diseased, than the rough bracing of the open air, the keen, swift life o...