senior dining member of which was a captain, kept remarking.—
"You know I'm senior to all you fellows. As I'm a lieutenant of eight years' service I rank with a major."
He might have ranked with a major-general for all any one cared, but after he had said this at intervals some nine or ten times it began to become monotonous; so somebody said, as if to the punkah:—
"I've often heard that remark made before, but I never yet heard a major in the army boast that he ranked with a lieutenant in the navy."
Society at Sierra Leone is in a very bad way; in fact from an English point of view one may say that there is no society at all. The only Europeans in the place are the officers of the garrison, the Colonial officials, and a few shop-keepers, who, although they will sell anything from three-pence worth of rum upwards, rejoice here in the title of merchants. Ladies there are none, except on the few occasions on which an officer's wife may be found residing at Tower Hill, so what little society there is consists of men alone, and is composed of the most heterogeneous elements. Most of the so-called merchants appear to have sprung from the lower strata of English life, many of them have black wives, and a
