His own peculiar reminiscences extended to nearly every regiment in the service, "horse, foot, and dragoons." There was not a clime he had not basked in; not an engagement he had not witnessed.

His memory, or, if you will, his invention, was never at fault; and from the siege of Seringapatam to the battle of Corunna he was perfect.

Besides this, he possessed a mind retentive of even the most trifling details of his profession,--from the formation of a regiment to the introduction of a new button, from the laying down of a parallel to the price of a camp-kettle, he knew it all.

To be sure, he had served in the commissary-general's department for a number of years, and nothing instils such habits as this.
"The commissaries are to the army what the special pleaders are to the bar," observed my friend Power,--"dry dogs, not over creditable on the whole, but devilish useful." The major had begun life a two-bottle man; but by a studious cultivation of his natural gifts, and a steady determination to succeed, he had, at the time I knew him, attained to his fifth.

It need not be wondered at, then, that his countenance bore some traces of his habits.