Panting to distinguish himself with his corps, he would gladly have annihilated time and space to have reached it, without spending so many tedious months in making the voyage.  Led away by his military ardor, he thought not of his anxious parents; little recked he of his mother’s sleepless nights, and how her maternal fears would fancy every breeze a gale, and every gale a storm, while he was subject to their influence.

Among those waiting to embark, was one who had just parted from his wife and children; care and anxiety had set their marks on him.  He was a man of domestic habits, and was now, perhaps, to be severed for years, from all that gave any charm to life; but the fiat for separation had gone forth, and was inevitable!  Soon would immense oceans roll between them; their resources, which, while they were together, were barely sufficient for their wants, were now to be divided; and the pang of parting, severe enough in itself, was sharpened by the fear that poverty and privation might overtake them, ere he could send remittances to his family.

A post chaise now came in sight, when an officer stepped forward, as it drove to the water’s edge, and assisted a lady to alight from it.  Her eyes were red with weeping and her trembling limbs seemed scarcely able to support her sinking frame.  Her husband, for such I found he was, who had gone towards the vehicle, showed little less emotion than herself, which he, however, strove hard to suppress.  These were parents, whom each successive wave would bear still further from their lovely offspring, towards whom their aching hearts would yearn, long after their childish tears had ceased to flow.  They, poor little things, knew not the blessings they were about to lose, but their fond and anxious father and mother could not forget, that they had consigned them to strangers, who might or who might not be kind to them, and who had too many under their care, to feel, or even show the endearing tenderness that marks parental love.

In regimental costume, also, stood one, quite aloof, and from his history, (which I afterwards learnt,) I found that his position on the beach corresponded with that in which he stood in the world—­alone; cared for by none, himself indifferent to all around him; every kindlier affection had withered in his breast.  He was careless whither he went or what became of him.  Yet was he not always so, for he had known a parent’s and a husband’s love.  His now blighted heart had often beaten with rapture, as the babe, on which he doted, first lisped a father’s name, taught by a mother, whose smile of affection was, for years, the sun that gladdened his existence.  But these bright visions of happiness had all flown; that being whom he had so fondly loved had dishonoured him, and neglected his boy, and on his return, he found one in the grave, the other living in infamy.