CHAPTER XXIV.
THE ADJUTANT'S DINNER.
The adjutant's dinner was as professional an affair as need be.

A circuit or a learned society could not have been more exclusively devoted to their own separate and immediate topics than were we.

Pipeclay in all its varieties came on the _tapis_; the last regulation cap, the new button, the promotions, the general orders, the colonel and the colonel's wife, stoppages, and the mess fund were all well and ably discussed; and strange enough, while the conversation took this wide range, not a chance allusion, not one stray hint ever wandered to the brave fellows who were covering the army with glory in the Peninsula, nor one souvenir of him that, was even then enjoying a fame as a leader second to none in Europe.

This surprised me not a little at the time; but I have since that learned how little interest the real services of an army possess for the ears of certain officials, who, stationed at home quarters, pass their inglorious lives in the details of drill, parade, mess-room gossip, and barrack scandal.

Such, in fact, were the dons of the present dinner.