OCR Text |
Show get close together to fight. What was meant by the Duke being alone was that all his aides "were off on duty,, but he was surrounded by tha guard that was lying on their faces, swearing that they were kept out of the fight, until, when the French old guard began to weaken, "Wellington himself gave the order, "Up, guards, and at them." ' In a modern fight the Duke, if alive, would be a mile in. the rear. He- could not supervise each regiment regi-ment in a battle. The whole business has been changed. At Waterloo, when the old guard deployed upon the plain before him, so magnificent were they, the horses and the men, so perfect 4 was their disci- nlinft. sr Rimprh thpir riattlA nrilnr ' flint. WolUnfrnr himself, knowing that their mission was if possible to smash his center and .roll him back upon Brussels, Brus-sels, could not refrain from exclaiming: "Splendid! Splendid!" A moment later he added: "What a .pity," for he knew that in five minutes all that splendid splen-did array would be broken, and that "Heaped and pent" They would be, "rider and-horse" "In one red burial blent." ON THE BATTLE LINE. . The London Evening Standard tells that in the crisis of Waterloo the Iron Duke was left alone, every one of his aides having been sent with orders, when a. stranger rode up to the Duke and quietly asked: "Can I be of any use, sir!" The Duke took one glance at him and unhesitatingly answered : . "Take this pencil note to the commanding officer," pointing to a regiment in the heat of the battle. The stranger took the note and galloped away with it, through the thick of the fight. He delivered it, but what happened to him no one knows. The Duke always al-ways declared that to be one of the most gallant things that had ever come under his notice. .It was . done without prospect of acknowledgment or reward, re-ward, and neither attended its successful accomplishment. accom-plishment. . Such a thing could hardly happen nowadays. Those were days of short range guns. Armies had to |