Adolphus Montier was a member of the military band.  He was drummer to the regiment by the grace of his capacity.  Besides, he played on the French horn, to the admiration of his wife, and others; and he could fill, at need, the place of any missing member of the company, leaving nothing to be desired in the performance.

Adolphus came to Foray in the first vessel that brought soldiers hither.  He saw the first stone laid in the building of the fort.  Here he had lived since.  He was growing gray in the years of peace.  He had some scars from the years of strife, he was a brave fellow, and idleness, a devil’s bland disguise, found no favor with him.

His daughter Elizabeth was the first child born on the island.  Bronzed warriors smiled on her fair infancy; sometimes they called her, with affectionate intonation, “The Daughter of the Regiment.”  She deserved the notice they bestowed,—­as infancy in general deserves all it receives,—­but Elizabeth for other reasons than that she had come whence none could tell, and was going whither no man could predict,—­for other reason than that she was the first discovered native of the island.  She was a beautiful child; and I state this fact not specially in deference to the universal expectation that a character brought forward for anybody’s notice should be personally capable of fascinating such.  Indeed, it seems inevitable that we find our heroines and heroes in life beautiful.  Miss Nightingale must needs remain our type of pure charity in person, as in character.  Elisha Kent Kane among his icebergs must stand manifestly efficient for his “princely purpose,” his eye and brow magnificent with beauty.  Rachel, to every woman’s memory, must live the unparalleled Camille.

Little Elizabeth—­I smile to write her name upon the page with these—­it were a shame to cheat of beauty by any bungle of description.  Is not a fair spirit predestined conqueror of flesh and blood?  Have we not read of the noble lady whose loveliness a painter’s eye was the very first to discover?  Where the likeness?  The soul saw it, not the eye; and he understood, who, seeing it, exclaimed, “Our friend—­in heaven!” While Adolphus Montier cleaned and polished his French horn, an occupation which was his unfailing resource, if he could find nothing else to do, or when he practised his music, business in which he especially delighted when off duty, it was his pleasure to have wife and child with him.

Imagination was an active power in the Drummer’s sphere.  He, away off in Foray, used to talk about the forms and colors of sounds, as if he knew about them; and he had not learned the talk in any school.  He would have done no injury to transcendentalism.  And he was a happy man, in that the persons before whom he indulged in this manner of speech rather encouraged it.  Never had his Pauline’s pride and fondness failed Adolphus the Drummer.  Life in Foray was little less than banishment, though it had its wages