3-078-216 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches of military life: the new Subaltern: day and night, 1890. Practical jokes in the British Army. 'The arrival of a young subaltern, newly admitted to her Majesty's service, at the headquarters of his regiment, may be a trying ordeal to bashful simplicity naturally anxious for the esteem of his future comrades...In all matters of social intercourse, and in every rank or class, military or civil, the comfort of life is most apt to be sacrificed to an excessive eagerness for the favourable regard of others, or to the dread of missing an opportunity of recommending oneself to their notice...No wiser advice can be given to the young man than those Shakspearean precepts - "The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear't so the opposer may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice. This above all: To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the light the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man".' From "Illustrated London News", 1890.