Tales of Military Life Author:George Robert Gleig Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: more proud than cautious. He was scrupulously attentive to every duty ; nor was it till after his patience had been tried beyond the power of human endurance, th... more »at the shadow of an accusation could be brought against him. CHAPTER II. I have said that Jackson, by venturing to remonstrate against an unjust exercise of power on the part of a sergeant, incurred the fullest extent of that person's implacable hostility. It unfortunately happened that Sergeant Tompkins, the irritated official, was pay-sergeant of the company to which Jackson belonged; and of the influence which the pay-sergeant possesses with the captain or officer in command, all who know any thing of the customs of the service must be aware. The whole of that influence was, on the present occasion, excited to impress Jackson's captain with an unfavourable opinion of the recruit. A thousand groundless complaints were made of him, as that he was mutinous, disorderly, unsocial, and impertinent; he was represented as an artful and dangerous hypocrite—one who took every opportunity of poisoning the minds of his comrades, at the same time that he affected to keep aloof from them—and of whom no good could possibly be expected, till his proud spirit should have been thoroughly broken. Captain Fletcher, the individual to whom these reports were carried, chanced to belong to that class of persons whom I have already represented as acknowledging no tolerance for any thing like an independent spirit in an inferior. He it was, indeed, who first took notice of the stiff and formal manner in which Jackson saluted,—a matter which he dwelt on with the greater bitterness, in consequence of a personal slight which he believed himself to have suffered at the hands of the young soldier. Having been pleased with the cleanliness and or...« less