id="pgepubid00032">THE TWO MUNCHAUSENS.

By a veteran.

In the late —— Regiment of Light Dragoons, were two worthy persons, who were denominated the regimental liars: a distinction to which, giving every man his due, they were eminently entitled. The great and fundamental requisites for accomplished lying, I conceive to be a good memory, a fertile fancy, a ready wit, fluency of speech, and a brazen countenance, so that you shall tell a man a most bare-faced falsehood, and afterwards adduce such connected proofs as especially characterize actual facts. The following dialogue is a specimen of the talents of the aforementioned mendacious personages.

C.—"See a man walk after he was shot dead! so have I, a whole day's march."

B.—"Come, come, that's stealing a march on our senses. No, no, it won't do: that's a naked one; do pray turn them out with some kind of probability covering over them."

C.—"What, doubt my veracity;"

B.—"Not for the world; that would be illiberal and unkind, and by the way, now I think on it, I believe the possibility of a man travelling without his cranium, for at the battle of Laswaree, during that desperate contest for British India, I saw a sergeant of the seventy-sixth shot dead; yet the fellow pursued his antagonist some hundred yards afterwards, threatening vengeance on the miscreant for having robbed the service of one of its best men. Finding himself weak from loss of blood, he deliberately unscrewed his head, threw it violently at the foe, and took him on the spine; down he tumbled; the veteran jumped upon him; fearful was the struggle; chest to chest, fist to fist; at last they joined in the death grapple, and dreadful indeed was their dying hug."

C.—"My dear friend, I was an eye witness of the whole transaction. You have however forgotten the best part of the story. After the sergeant had well pummelled his enemy, he picked up his head again, and thrust into a neighbouring great gun: from the want of his peepers he made a random shot, and killed the horse on which Lord Lake was riding—his Lordship saluted the sod."

B.—"I recollect it perfectly; for the nose of the said sergeant (recognised by sundry carbuncles) was so hard, that the following day it was extracted from the abdomen of the unfortunate animal."

C.—"You make a mistake about the nose; it was discovered lodged in a loaf in a corporal's knapsack; the man could swear to it, for it was perforated by three balls, and otherwise curiously marked. Report said that a shell had once blown it completely off, and that it was stitched on again by a shoe-maker, who, ever after, went by the name of the nosy cobbler."

B.—"Nothing impossible. It reminds me of a story somewhat as strange: During the battle of Delhi there was a quarter-master in the regiment, a queer fellow, who was never at a loss; (he is now in the corps, and can vouch for my statement) he was charging at the head of his squadron, when he caught a cannon shot in his hands: instantly dismounting, he chucked the ball into a field-piece, but, for want of a ramrod, he drove it home with his head. One of the enemy, seeing him thus zealously occupied, fired off the gun; strange to tell he was not killed! From constant exposure to the sun, in search of toddy, and from the free use of cocoa-nut oil, his head had become proof against shot. The distance from the place whence he was projected, to that where he was picked up, measured three miles, two furlongs, three yards, and eleven inches. A hard-headed fellow, Sir.—In his career he upset his colonel and a brace of captains."

C.—"He did; and where the colonel was capsized, he made such a hole by his enormous weight, that the sovereign of Delhi ordered a large well to be dug on the spot, in memory of the event."

B.—"I remember the well—twelve feet, three inches and a half, was the exact depth of the excavation occasioned by the fall."

C.—"There you are wrong; only eleven feet, three inches—"

B.—"No, believe me, I am right; twelve feet, and three inches to a barleycorn."

C.—"Never mind: a little, this way or that, is of no consequence. The most extraordinary thing was, that the gallant colonel only sprained his right arm."

B.—"By no means extraordinary. You remember the great gun of Agra, in which a regiment of cavalry used to drill."

C—"I do. The one that fired the stone ball to the wall of Futtipoore Sikrah—twenty miles."

B.—"The same. Well, when that gun was fired, a thing that never occurred but once, the head of the rash man who fired it was afterwards found in the Old Woman's Tank, eleven miles from the spot, without so much as a blemish, except a slight singing of the right whisker."

C.—"Ah! I can never forget the time; I had just landed in Calcutta when we heard the report. Some of the wadding went as far as Cawnpore."

Here the trumpet, sounding for morning drill, put a stop to the colloquy.—Englishman's Magazine.

THE MISER'S GRAVE.

BY THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.