I was the next to the last one.

A half a year ago I used to always be the last one; but I've been promoted.' Well, they told me that that poor fellow remained a Roman soldier to the last--a matter of thirty-four years.

Sometimes they cast him for a 'speaking part,' but not an elaborate one.

He could be trusted to go and say, 'My lord, the carriage waits,' but if they ventured to add a sentence or two to this, his memory felt the strain and he was likely to miss fire.

Yet, poor devil, he had been patiently studying the part of Hamlet for more than thirty years, and he lived and died in the belief that some day he would be invited to play it! And this is what came of that fleeting visit of those young Englishmen to our village such ages and ages ago! What noble horseshoes this man might have made, but for those Englishmen; and what an inadequate Roman soldier he DID make! A day or two after we reached St.Louis, I was walking along Fourth Street when a grizzly-headed man gave a sort of start as he passed me, then stopped, came back, inspected me narrowly, with a clouding brow, and finally said with deep asperity-- 'Look here, HAVE YOU GOT THAT DRINK YET ?' A maniac, I judged, at first.