Soyer's Culinary Campaign: Being Historical Reminiscences of the Late War.: With The Plain Art of Cookery for Military and Civil Institutions

port, champagne--laughter, puns, and fun in abundance--witty anecdotes, and plenty of songs, good, bad, and indifferent, prevailed. The sixteen officers were joined by about twenty more after dinner. They sat down anywhere and everywhere, even out of doors. It was, in fact, the most martial festival I had seen during my visit to the Crimea, and quite cast in the shade our former semi-banquet at head-quarters. It was midnight ere this jovial party broke up; and a few minutes after I was on my way home. The sentry on duty at the Col of Balaklava was calling out, with the lungs of a Stentor, “Who goes there?” to a group bearing lighted torches coming towards him; and several voices, in a mournful tone, replied, “Friends.” “Pass, friends.” A sudden change of scene and sensation soon took place! On approaching the group, and inquiring what was the matter, I perceived four Sardinian soldiers bearing a sick officer upon a stretcher. He was followed by several others. The Sardinians at that time suffered terribly from fever and cholera, and their daily loss of men was something fearful. They were admitted to the General Hospital, as there was not sufficient room in their own. Following the group with solemn interest as far as the General Hospital, I learned that the precious burden they were carrying was one of the bravest officers of this small though perfect model of an army. It was a Major Crossetti, in the bloom of life, his age only six-and-thirty, who was suddenly attacked by cholera; and Miss Wear (the head lady under Miss Nightingale) begged of me to go and offer consolation, as well as to interpret and explain to the doctors what his servant required. He had then only just been attacked. In less than two hours, the fatal malady had increased to that extent that no hope was entertained of saving him, though every attention had been immediately afforded. Alas! all was of no avail. The contraction and sudden change of one of the finest and noblest military faces I ever beheld, graced by a beard