Good wine, says the proverb, needs no bush; on thesame principle, some will think that a book, if readable,may dispense with a preface. As a general rule this maybe true, but there are occasions, and I take leave to deemthis one of them, when, from the peculiar nature of thesubject, a few preliminary observations, by creating aclear and possibly a pleasant understanding between theauthor and the gentle reader, may not be unacceptable orout of place. In the following little narrative, in whichI have blended fact and fiction—though always endeavouringto keep the vraisemblable in view—my objecthas been to depict some of those scenes, characters, andadventures, which some five-and-twenty or thirty yearsago a “jolly cadet”—alias a Griffin—was likely toencounter, during the first year of his military career;men, manners, and things in general have, since thatperiod, undergone considerable changes; still, in its mainfeatures, the sketch I have drawn, admitting its originalcorrectness, will doubtless apply as well to Griffins inthe present mature age of the century, as when it was inits teens. The Griffin, or Greenhorn, indeed, thoughviiisubject, like everything else, to the external changesincident to time and fashion, is, perhaps, fundamentallyand essentially, one of the “never ending, still beginning”states, or phases of humanity, destined to exist tillthe “crash of doom.”

The characters which I have introduced in my narrative(for the most part as transiently as the fleetingshadows of a magic lantern across a spectrum) are allintended to represent respectively classes having more orless of an Oriental stamp, some still existing unchanged—others

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