STRONG AND WEAK.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 36, 6 September 1890, Page 18

STRONG AND WEAK.

At the storming of Loftsha, during the Russo-Turkish War, General Skobeleff ordered an officer to lead a battalion to a certain point. The men marched on as long as there were buildings to shelter them from the Turkish fire, but when they came to the open ground they halted, for an advance, apparently, meant the annihilation of the battalion. Just at that moment the men saw Skobeleff ruling calmly at a walk across the fatal space, while round him shot and shell whistled furiously. In a fight, after the passage of the Balkans, the painter Verestchagin says that the rain of bullets was the most murderous he ever experienced, though he had been several times under heavy fire. In spite of the danger, he watched Skobeleff walk slowly along, his hands buried in the pockets of his overcoat. The whistling bullets did not cause him to bend his head once ; his face was quiet, and his eyes restful. ‘ Now we know what running the gauntlet means,’said he to the artist, as a turn in the road sheltered them from the bullets of the Turk. ‘ Tell me honestly,’ said the artist, ‘ have you really so accustomed yourself to war that you no longer fear danger? ‘ Nonsense,’ replied the Russian General, ‘ they think that I am brave and that I am afraid of nothing ; but I confess that lam a coward. But I have made it a rule never - to bend down under fire. If you once permit yourself to do that, you will be drawn on farther than you wish. Whenever I go into action I say to myself that this time there will be an end of me.’ But though courageous under fire, the Russian General was a coward at headquarters. Before his troops he always appeared in a full dress uniform, with his hair neatly trimmed and scented. But in the presence of his superiors he wore a worn-out coat, a cloak hanging all awry, and a cap crushed down on the back of his head. He seemed embarrassed, as if afraid his elegance might give offence. This hero of many battles was superstitious. He believed in lucky and unlucky days, refused to sit down with thirteen at table, jumped from his seat at the spilling of a little salt, and left a room in which three candles were burning. What a bundle of contradictions is man. A general with a will that enables him to walk slowly across a battle-field swept with bullets and shell, but not strong enough to keep him in a room where three candles are burning.

Tommy (studying his lesson) : ‘ I say, pa, where does the Thames rise, and into what sea does it empty?’ I’ll: ‘ I don’t know, my son.’ Tommy: ‘You don’t know, eh? And to-morrow the teacher will lick me on account of your ignorance.’