"No doubt it's uncommon good for them as can bring their minds to it--just like water instead o' wine--but it's very trying, like the teetotalism.

You might as well tell a Newfoundland not to love a splash as me not to love a chatter.

I'd cut my tongue out sooner than say never a word that you don't wish--but say something I must, or die for it." With which the speaker, known to Algerian fame by the sobriquet of "Crache-au-nez-d'la-Mort," from the hair-breadth escapes and reckless razzias from which he had come out without a scratch, dropped on his knees and began to take off the trappings of his fellow-soldier, with as reverential a service as though he were a lord of the bedchamber serving a Louis Quatorze.

The other motioned him gently away.
"No, no! I have told you a thousand times we are comrades and equals now." "And I've told you a thousand times, sir, that we aren't, and never will be, and don't oughtn't to be," replied the soldier doggedly, drawing off the spurred and dust-covered boots.

"A gentleman's a gentleman, let alone what straits he fall into." "But ceases to be one as soon as he takes a service he cannot requite, or claims a superiority he does not possess.