"Subaltern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... young men in the army, I believe, adopt this system, from motives both of moral and of economical prudence. A pint, or even half a pint, of wine per day, makes a considerable hole in the pay of a subaltern, or in the stipend of a country curate, or in the allowance of a briefless barrister. Avoid acquiring factitious wants. Do not by habit make wine necessary to your comfort. It is wise, when young, not to indulge ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... volunteers could only be auxiliaries around this solid nucleus which would show them the way to perform their duty and take the brunt of every encounter. The young regulars who asked leave to accept commissions in state regiments were therefore refused, and were ordered to their own subaltern positions and posts. There can be no doubt that the true policy would have been to encourage the whole of this younger class to enter at once the volunteer service. They would have been the field officers of the new regiments, and would have ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... the Major led us over sandy hills and along sandy valleys and so to a dingy and weatherworn hut, in whose dingy interior we found a bright-faced subaltern in dingy uniform and surrounded by many dingy boxes and a heterogeneous collection of things. The subaltern was busy at work on a bomb with a penknife, while at his elbow stood a sergeant grasping a screwdriver, who, perceiving the Major, came ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... although the cause was removed, the combat nevertheless commenced. The column of the insurgents surrounded the chateau. The Marseillais and Bretons who occupied the first rank had just forced the Porte Royale on the Carrousel, and entered the court of the chateau. They were led by an old subaltern, called Westermann, a friend of Danton, and a very daring man. He ranged his force in battle array, and approaching the artillerymen, induced them to join the Marseillais with their pieces. The Swiss filled the ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... of religious worship into latria, dulia, and hyperdulia, the refined classification of prayer under the two heads of direct, absolute, final, sovereign, on the one hand, and of oblique, relative, transitory, subaltern, on the other, swell indeed many elaborate works of casuistry, but are not discoverable in the remains of primitive Christians, nor in the writings of God's word have they any place. I cannot find in the inspired Apostles ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... leave in order to give excuse for the appointment of A.P.M.'s. There are thousands of us, and we are supposed to run the War. These are the things which I am sure (if you get newspapers in Ceylon) jump into your mind the moment I mention the word subaltern, and I may as well tell you that in associating me with any one of these deeds at the present time you ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various
... subaltern is our guide in that maze of trenches, and we walk and walk and walk, with a brisk exchange of compliments between the '75's' of the French and the '77's' of the Germans going on high over our heads. The trenches are boarded at the sides, and have ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... strangers, and Wee Willie Winkie was a very particular child. Once he accepted an acquaintance, he was graciously pleased to thaw. He accepted Brandis, a subaltern of the 195th, on sight. Brandis was having tea at the Colonel's, and Wee Willie Winkie entered strong in the possession of a good-conduct badge won for not chasing the hens round the compound. He regarded Brandis ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... seat beside Earl Roberts. Age had dealt very kindly with the veteran of Kandahar and South Africa. Although a consistent water drinker, Lord Roberts had a very florid complexion, which was just as bright and ruddy as that of a subaltern of twenty, despite his extreme age. This kind of complexion makes it difficult for a man to gain admission to a temperance ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... leaped up at once as obediently as when he came to attention on parade, years ago, as a subaltern in the Prussian Guard, a man whom no woman or child as yet had ever cursed; he leaped up and followed. They passed the silent sentries; none challenged and none saluted; they were moving swiftly over the town as the felon Gothas go; they came to a cottage ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... February 17, 1754, a date important because it marks the first permanent white settlement there. But his work had been retarded alike by the small number of his men and the severity of the winter; and when Contrecoeur arrived in April, the young subaltern who commanded in Trent's absence surrendered the unfinished works, and was permitted to march away with his thirty-three men. The French completed the fort and named it Duquesne, in honor of the governor of Canada; and they held possession of it for ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... think how difficult it is to take any interest in military matters sometimes. The inclination to let things slide. The feeling that an order is not so terrifying as it once was; that after all, who will know or bother if one furtive subaltern creeps ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... scarcely can fail to be impressed by the pertinacity with which men, after one experience in the polar regions, return again and again to the quest for adventure and honors in the ice-bound zone. The subaltern on the expedition of to-day, has no sooner returned than he sets about organizing a new expedition, of which he may be commander. The commander goes into the ice time and again until, perhaps, the time comes when he does not come out. The leader of a rescue party becomes the leader of ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... deceived, and are you but a genius of the second order—a subaltern spirit, an intermediate power? Diable! this would take away a little of my ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... farewells sounding down the length of the train when Betty stepped out on to the platform. A curly-headed subaltern of a Highland regiment who had been in possession of the door surrendered it, and, catching a glimpse of Betty's face, returned to his compartment thanking all his Gods that he was a bachelor. A whistle ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... certificate; asked divers questions concerning the art of war, to which I returned such answers as convinced him that I was not wholly ignorant in that particular. In short, I was enlisted as a volunteer in his own regiment, and soon after promoted to the rank of a subaltern, and the office of equerry to his own son, who, at that time, had attained to the degree of colonel, though his age did ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... major's household was not entirely harmonious. While a young infantry subaltern at a Gulf station, he had been attracted by the piquant foreign accent and dramatic gestures of a French Creole widow, and—believing them, in the first flush of his youthful passion more than an offset to the encumbrance of her two children who, with the memory of various ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... narrative of the campaigns in Egypt and Pontus, known as the Bellum Alexandrinum, was written by him or by another officer of Caesar's, Gaius Oppius. The books on the campaigns of Africa and Spain which follow are by different hands: the former evidently by some subaltern officer who took part in the war, and very interesting as showing the average level of intelligence and culture among Roman officers of the period; the latter by another author and in very inferior Latin, full of grammatical ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... grade." They called him "Crank Cranston" in the Eleventh for quite a while, but without affecting in the faintest degree his sturdy stand. Margaret's gowns continued simple and inexpensive, and their mode of living modest as any subaltern's, and many women spoke of them as "close" and "mean," but many men wished openly they had Cranston's moral courage. At home, too, better times had come. There was the old homestead, and Mr. Cranston as counsel of certain big corporations had his easy salary and little work. There was no ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... again called to the orderly-room, and directed to march with the Grenadier company on outlying picket to the left rear of the cantonment, and close to the lines of the disarmed sepoys. Two guns of the Light Field Battery, under a subaltern, were also placed under my orders, and I took with me a young ensign to ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... uncultivated, no military or civil career other than a prolonged guard duty, threatened and threatening, as soldier, customs-inspector, or gendarme, as prefect, sub-prefect, or commissioner of police, that is to say, as subaltern henchman and bully restraining subjects and raising contributions, confiscating and burning merchandise, seizing grumblers, and making the refractory toe the mark.[12137] In 1810, one hundred and sixty thousand of the refractory ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... entertainment in the shape of a Cinema, which our Division had recently added to its institutions. The Divisional "Whizz-bangs" were still showing, but were rather under a cloud, although that great actor subaltern from the Battalion, Moffat Johnston, gave them a helping hand for a short time. Being "out to soldier," however, he preferred the front line, and very ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... "A subaltern riding at the rear of a column of soldiers trotted up to the captain in front and challenged him to a game of billiards for half-a-crown a side, the loser to pay for the table. Having lost, he played another hundred, double or quits, and then rode back, the column by this time having travelled ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... low. We all remember what powerful sensations those literary wonders at first created, and what a crowd of imitators followed in their train. The Magazines soon caught up the tone, and became doubly interesting, with the lives of private soldiers, "Two or Three Years in the Peninsula," and the "Subaltern." The camp and the man-of-war now poured forth their vast stories of anecdote and adventure, in all shapes and sizes—octavo and article—sketches of character, local customs and antiquities, filled ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... schoolboy, unable to wreak his anger on the bigger boy who has just struck him, turn against the nearest smaller boy and beat him? Did you ever know a schoolmaster, angered by one of the boy's parents, vent his pent-up spleen upon the unoffending class? Did you ever see a subaltern punished because an officer had been reprimanded? These are familiar examples of vicarious vengeance. When the soul is stung to fury, it must solace itself by the discharge of that fury—it must relieve its pain ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... battle of Waterloo, or Sedan, or Bull Run, I knew all about that, as I had crammed it up and been examined in it, too. I also knew how to take up a position for a division, or even an army corps, but the stupid little subaltern's game of the defence of a drift with a small detachment was, curiously enough, most perplexing. I had never really considered such a thing. However, in the light of my habitual dealings with army corps, it would, no doubt, be ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... little at the ingenuous confession of the subaltern, but a moment later, he opened his eyes very wide, when Roderick told him in minute detail all the circumstances which we have narrated in ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... feel about a certain article, Tyrant, in the Philosophical Dictionary. They will never forgive Voltaire for saying that it was better to have to do with a single wild beast, which one could avoid, than with a band of little subaltern tigers who are incessantly getting between your legs.... To return to those two unfortunate wretches whom they have condemned to the galleys. When they come out, what will become of them? There will be nothing left for them to do, save to turn highway robbers. The ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... open day and night. Their furniture is so scant that they can move in an instant. The country houses are of the same description. There is little distinction among the people. The only difference between them consists in the possession of a little more or less property, and, perhaps, the rank of a subaltern officer ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... I was subaltern of the cantonment main-guard at Bangalore one day in the month of June, 182-. Tattoo had just beaten; and I was sitting in the guard-room with my friend Frederick Gahagan, the senior Lieutenant in the regiment to which I belonged, and manager ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... behind one in the last great fight, awaiting the order to advance, when a battery came up at full gallop. We all made sure they must be pulled up the nullah. They never pulled bridle. 'Leading gun, right turn!' sang out the subaltern; and down they went sideways into the nullah. Then, 'Left turn;' up the other bank, one gun after another, the horses scrambling like cats up and down places that my men had to use their hands to scramble up, and away on the other side to within 200 yards of the enemy; and then, round ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... men entered this kitchen: they were the cook, or coquus, and his subaltern, the slave of the slave, focarius. The meal is ready, and now come other slaves assigned to the table,—the tricliniarches, or foreman of all the rest; the lectisterniator, who makes the beds; the ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... one God, he generally supposed the different departments of nature were confided to powers subordinate to his supreme orders, under whom the sovereign of the gods discharged his care in the administration of the world. These subaltern gods were prodigiously multiplied; each man, each town, each country, had their local, their tutelary gods; every event, whether fortunate or unfortunate, had a divine cause; was the consequence of a sovereign decree; ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... other in the world, was ended at last, however, and they puffed past Lake Nakuro to the village station. Here their trip was ended, their baggage was rolled off, and they were taken in charge by a young subaltern, Lieutenant Smithers, together with the Boer merchant, Piet Andrus. The latter offered them the hospitality of his trading store, ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... agility in dodging pickets and his skill in making a week's C.B. a veritable holiday are the talk of the regiment. All the officers know him, and many of them who have been victims of his smart repartee fear him more than they care to acknowledge. The subaltern with the eyeglass is a bad route-marcher, and Wankin once remarked in an audible whisper that the officer had learned his company drill with a drove of haltered pack-horses, and the officer bears the name of "Pack-horse" ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... proper that she should magnify her first real commission. No veteran soldier ever donned a field marshal's uniform with the same zest that he displayed when his subaltern's outfit came from the tailor. So Helen glowed with that serious enthusiasm which is the soul of genius, for without it life becomes flat and gray, and she passed many anxious, half-doubting hours until a courteous bank official handed her a packet at the appointed time on Monday, ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... handing his rifle to Bela Moshi, and before his companions could grasp the situation the subaltern plunged into the grass, made a sudden dash, and was back with a healthy young ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... one liked or cared for, and I know nothing of him, except that I once saw him in court, on trial for some alleged petty tyranny towards his men,—still a subaltern officer. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... his grasp slowly. He could not bear the pain and terror in the eyes of the slender English youth, who, though he wore the uniform of a subaltern, seemed so much out of place there in the deep woods. Yet the forester meant to ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a regular chaplain—there was no regular padre in that ship, and we were likely to have no church parade until there was discovered amongst the reinforcement officers one little subaltern who was a padre in Tasmania, but who was going to the front as a fighting man. We had heard other padres speak to troops on the eve of their plunging into a great enterprise, when the sermon had made some of us wish that ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... Gros. And for his sake she regretted much that the attempt had been made. She had already learned one or two details with reference to M. Le Gros. Though his manners and appearance were so pleasant, he was only a subaltern about the theatre; and he was a subaltern whom this lord and lessee called simply Le Gros. And from the melancholy nature of his face when the application for money was made to him, she had learned that he was both good-natured and impecunious. Of herself, ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... The subaltern went to carry out the order, and Falconnet fell to pacing back and forth before the little wigwam. I could see his face at the turn where the firelight fell upon him; 'twas the face of a villain at his worst, ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... the haunted midnight hours, When star-shells droop through the shattered trees, Steal they back to their ancient bowers, Beau Brocade and his Belle Marquise? Greatly loving and greatly daring— Fancy, perhaps, but the fancy grips, For a junior subaltern woke up swearing That a gracious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... himself, between whiles, with kisses, touches and embraces I could not refuse myself to. Yet he happily returned to his master before he was missed; but, at taking leave, I forced him (for he had sentiments enough to refuse it) to receive money enough to buy a silver watch, that great article of subaltern finery, which he at length accepted of, as a remembrance he was carefully ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... previously stated, he could not foresee everything. He did not know, for instance, that his cheroot-smoking subaltern—a youth as guileless as he was indiscreet, for the two usually go together—possessed a memory like a dry-plate. He did not foresee that a passing conversation in an Indian bungalow might perchance photograph itself on the somewhat ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... sir," declared the subaltern, when telling his story to his colonel afterwards, "never did I see so spry a bit of work as I did when I had said my little say. The Duke was ten men rolled into one, sir. Orders here, there, and everywhere; fellows sent ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... a young subaltern of the enemy's infantry, followed by his eager men, burst into this reeking interior. But just over the threshold he halted before the scene of blood and death. He turned with a shrug to his sergeant. "God, I should have estimated them at least one ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... too much perturbed in mind to attempt to answer the question,—"he could never go back contentedly to ordinary subaltern's work after this. He will do something desperate—perhaps even get transferred to the Bombay side, and volunteer ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... faults; however, he lost his life three days afterwards from not taking my advice. He was going down the hill with Rulhieres when I said to him, 'Mon General, you expose yourself too much; that which is duty in a subaltern is a fault in a general.' He very politely told me to go to where he may chance to be himself now; for a cannon-ball struck him a few seconds afterwards, and he was killed on the spot. General Perregaux ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... excitement as the correspondence passes down and down, from one formation to another, and what an air of urgency and bitterness they wear when they reach the last man. In this case the young German subaltern, who had no one else below him on whom to put the burden of explaining in writing, took advantage of his position, and wrote upon a slip, which he attached to the top of the others: "To Officer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... to show I know all about it; I know another, "the berm," but I am not too sure about what that is, and also I don't suppose I could draw a "berm" if I saw one. Anyway, I know it's quite a good term connected with trenches, as I heard a G.O.C. fairly strafe a subaltern, the other day, because he hadn't got a "berm." Well, to refer to the map, you will observe that there is an old ditch running between the two lines of trenches, and both sides have advanced a certain distance along this ditch and have built barricades about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... facts:—It appeared that ever since she was a child, Miss Heston had been addicted to drinking fits, and that it was on account of this constitutional weakness, which was of course concealed from me, that she had been allowed to engage herself to a penniless subaltern. It appeared, too, that the habit was hereditary, for her mother had died from the effects of drink, and one of her aunts had ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... been more than nine years old. The other, the young man, held himself up and marched along without a single cry as the thongs fell brutally upon him. I was appalled. I did not give my husband time to open his mouth before I called to the subaltern who commanded the detachment, 'You should be ashamed to strike a child and a Christian like that, which cannot defend itself.' The general told him the same thing. Then the subaltern told us that the little child ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... us of this. We've been trapped,' said a subaltern. 'Aren't the camel guns ever going to ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... Rouge-et-noir and Roulette-table hold a melancholy pre-eminence,—being at once a shameful source of revenue to the prince,—a rallying point for the gay, the beautiful, the professional blackleg, the incognito duke or king,—and a vortex in which the student, the merchant, and the subaltern officer are, in the course of the season, often hopelessly and irrevocably ingulfed. Remembering the gaming excitement of the primitive Germans, we can scarcely be surprised to find that the descendants of these northern races poison the pure stream of pleasure by ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... examples to the humbler classes of the community; for the unfortunate results of this too fatal propensity to parents and society have been severely felt. Among many instances on record, a very interesting one is related of a young Subaltern in a regiment of cavalry, who, by successive losses, was reduced to such a state of distress, as to form the desperate resolution of trying the road. In a moment of agony, he accidentally met with an opportunity which seemed to favour his design, having learned that a certain ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Chatelet was not an unkindly man, and muttering something about "hangman's work" he came up and surveyed us by the light of the torches. Then he ordered my hands to be freed, and drawing his subaltern aside gave him some commands in a low tone, ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... pardon by the Czar inflamed the Cossacks, and the German or Polish captives, who sighed for liberty, considering Siberia the road to their fatherland. Iermak began by organizing his little army. He named the hetmans, subaltern officers, and appointed the brave John Koltzo as second in command. Long-boats were laden with munitions of war and food, light artillery and long arquebuses. He procured guides, interpreters, priests, had prayers said, and received the final instructions of the Stroganoffs. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... began thus: "I think, serjeant, Mr. Booth hath told me that you was foster-brother to his lady. She is really a charming woman, and it is a thousand pities she should ever have been placed in the dreadful situation she is now in. There is nothing so silly as for subaltern officers of the army to marry, unless where they meet with women of very great fortunes indeed. What can be the event of their marrying otherwise, but entailing misery and beggary on their ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... persons; but if their company is unavoidable, I have at least learnt to hold my tongue. The other day I was at a country-house where an old and extremely tiresome General laid down the law on the subject of the Mutiny, where he had fought as a youthful subaltern. I was pretty sure that he was making the most grotesque misstatements, but I was not in a position to contradict them. Next the General was a courteous, weary old gentleman, who sate with his finger-tips pressed together, smiling and nodding at intervals. Half-an-hour later we were lighting ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... necessary to have four whale-boats (which can be procured without cause for suspicion); they must be well manned by their respective crews, including guides, etc.; beside these, one captain, one subaltern, three sergeants, and thirty-six men, with whom the boats can row with ease.—N.B. It is known where the boats are, and that they can be collected without suspicion, with their oars-men; and it is taken for granted, the owners will not object, though, for fear of giving the least cause ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... to prolong their existence, armed and united themselves with those who wished to preserve the raft; among this number were some subaltern officers and many passengers. The rebels drew their sabres, and those who had none armed themselves with knives. They advanced in a determined manner upon us; we stood on our defence; the attack commenced. Animated by despair, one of them aimed a stroke at an officer; the rebel instantly fell, pierced ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... conclusion that he had had enough of military life in the West. He applied for his discharge, as the compulsory term of service was at an end. When his papers came he was able to get about with the aid of a crutch. One morning his colonel entered his subaltern's bachelor quarters. ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... attractions, and supposed to possess a large fortune. To deceive her, he pretended to be the heir to the earldom, and, after a hasty courtship, they ran off, and were married. When they compared notes, which they soon did, it was discovered that, on his side, he had nothing but the pay of a subaltern, and on hers, that she had not one shilling. Your father stormed, and called his wife an impostor; she recriminated, and the second morning after the marriage was passed in tears on her side, and oaths, curses, ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... sister and gladden his mother's eyes. But until then, the boy had said to himself, he'd stick to the field, and the troop that had the roughest work to do was the one that best suited him, and so it had happened that by the second spring of his service in the regiment no subaltern was held in higher esteem by senior officers or regarded with more envy by the lazy ones among the juniors than the young graduate, for those, too, were days in which graduates were few and far between, except in higher grades. Twice had he ridden in the dead of winter ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... should a Letter have come for you by that Steamer; for I wrote one duly, and posted it in good time myself: I will hope therefore it was but some delay of some subaltern official, such as I am told occasionally chances, and that you got the Letter after all in a day or two. It would give you notice, more or less, up to its date, of all the points you had inquired about there is now little to ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... heroes. The common soldier enters the stormed fortress and, falling in the breach which his valor has made, sleeps in a nameless grave. The subaltern whose surname is scarcely heard beyond the roll-call on parade, bears the colors of his company where the fight is hottest. And the corporal who heads his file in the final charge, is forgotten in the "earthquake shout" of the victory which ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... twenty, dressed in a Russian uniform. On his loose-fitting blouselike tunic, torn in many places, is pinned a black and yellow ribbon, and hanging from a thin remaining strand shines the silver medal of St. George. An Italian subaltern ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... over a ridge—and here was the camp. Bugles sang cheerily; mules, linked in fives, were being zigzagged frowardly down to water. The Royal Irish Fusiliers had loosened their belts, but not their sturdy bearing. Under their horses' bellies lay the diminished 18th Hussars. Presently came up a subaltern of the regiment, who had been on leave and returned just too late to rejoin before the line was cut. They had put him in command of the advanced troop of the Lancers, and how he cursed the infantry and the convoy, and how ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... Gates in opposition to General Washington. In the beginning of January, 1778, it was reported to Burr that Lord Stirling had made some remarks respecting the manner in which the colonel had contributed to arrange the rank of his (Burr's) subaltern officers. Lord Stirling at this time commanded the division. It will be recollected that, a few weeks previous, Colonel Burr had proposed to the commander-in-chief an enterprise against Staten Island, which was rejected; but, immediately ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... through the medium of the newspapers, that I was going to visit the missions of the Rio Negro, and examine the natural canal which unites two great systems of rivers. In those desert forests instruments had been seen only in the hands of the commissioners of the boundaries; and at that time the subaltern agents of the Portuguese government could not conceive how a man of sense could expose himself to the fatigues of a long journey, to measure lands that did not belong to him. Orders had been issued ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the objections which stood against him on the Company's records. The choice of Mr. John Stables, from an inferior military to the highest civil capacity, was by no means proper, nor an encouraging example to either service. His conduct, indeed, in the subaltern military situation, had received, and seems to have deserved, commendation; but no sufficient ground was furnished for confounding the lines and gradations of service. This measure was, however, far less exceptionable ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... duty would seem a disgrace, when the Prior of the Knights of Saint John was superintendent of the operations, when the Captain-General of the Netherlands had arranged the whole plan, and when all, from subaltern to viceroy, had received minute instructions as to the contemplated treachery from the great chief of the Spanish police, who sat on the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... served with him in the ranks, and he could not withstand their pleadings. When all was settled, Dawson went to the Commandant's quarters to be introduced to his second-in-command, and surprised there that officer endeavouring to squeeze his rather middle-aged figure within the buttoned limits of a subaltern's tunic. Since the senior officers of Marines never go to sea, the Commandant's own official uniform was the field-service khaki of a Staff officer. "It is all right," explained he, laughing. "I have become a lieutenant again, and am going north with ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... you propose yourself to be a ruler over ten cities. You strip yourself by such a step of all remaining consolations and excuses. You are no longer content to be your own enemy; you must be your wife's also. You have been hitherto in a mere subaltern attitude; dealing cruel blows about you in life, yet only half responsible, since you came there by no choice or movement of your own. Now, it appears, you must take things on your own authority: God made you, but you marry yourself; and for all that your ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... first leave—were the most encumbered, self-possessed, and asserting; those of the second year, so to say, usually got a corner-seat and looked out of window; while here and there a senior officer, or a subaltern with a senior's face, selected a place, arranged his few possessions, and got out a paper, not in the Oxford manner, as if he owned the place, but in the Cambridge, as if he didn't care a damn ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... spitting? Such vulgar manners!" his wife cried angrily. "You behave at home like a drunken subaltern. You haven't the least consideration for your wife. You are so coarse in your behaviour towards me! Do, please, go to ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... paid no heed. He employed himself in watching the prostrate Boer attentively, and noticed that his eyes were being blinked violently, as if the man were in a great state of excitement. But he seemed to calm down rapidly as the young subaltern walked to and fro, holding the light up, then down, and always coming back ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... nearly eight hundred, including the subaltern officers. These recruits, or the majority of them at least, were recruits in name only; they had seen service in many a hard campaign of the Rebellion. Some, of course, were beardless youths just out of their teens, full of that martial ardour which induced so many young men of the ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... owed most at this juncture was Aymar de Chastes. Though Champlain had served the king faithfully, his youth and birth prevented him from doing more than belongs to the duty of a subaltern. But De Chastes, as governor of Dieppe, at a time when the League seemed everywhere triumphant, gave Henry aid which proved to be the means of raising him from the dust. It was a critical event for Champlain ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... upon family, or fashion—any of my aristocratic prejudices as your father calls them—and I might, perhaps, be a little peremptory. But John Clay is a man just risen from the ranks, lately promoted from being a manufacturer's son, to be a subaltern in good company, looking to rise another step by purchase: no, no—a Percy could not accept such an offer—no loss of fortune could justify such a mesalliance. Such was my first feeling, and I am sure yours, when you read at the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... of their rank whenever they should be declared insolvent by the tribunals. It appears to me that money would then be lent with more confidence, and borrowed with greater circumspection. Another advantage which would accrue from such a regulation, would be, that the subaltern orders of men, who imitate the customs and the prejudices of the higher class of citizens, would soon be apprehensive of incurring the same disgrace; and that fidelity in engagements would become one of the characteristic ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... father-in-law, had married his Molly, when he was a subaltern of a foot regiment, and had a purse scarce better filled than my own. They had had their ups and downs of fortune. I think (though my wife will never confess to this point) they had married, as people could do in their young time, without ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was the monotony broken, and that unwittingly, by the humour of one of the officers. In the course of the evening, the train stopped at a small station, and the compartment in which the officers were settled drew up in front of the Buffet. Some one asked where we were, and a subaltern, anxious to display his newly-acquired knowledge of French, replied, "Bouvette," which called forth no response. Shortly afterwards the train proceeded on its way, and the occupants of the carriage settled themselves down to sleep. All passed quietly for the next couple of hours—then ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... them!" said their irate colonel, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder to the carriages in which these blood-thirsty British officers sat. The colonel, however, did not wait to see his behest carried out, and a very gentlemanly German subaltern quietly urged his men to get back to their train and leave us alone. The only daggers that pierced us were the eyes of a couple of priests, a few women and boys, who appeared to be shocked beyond words that even a clergyman was amongst ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... I have play'd the little hour, Have seen the tall subaltern Life to Death Yield up his sword; and, smiling, draw the breath, The first long breath of freedom; when the flower Of Recompense hath flutter'd to our feet, As to an actor's; and, the curtain down, We turn to face each other all alone— Alone, we two, who never yet did meet, Alone, and absolute, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... high spirits. It was certainly an honor, to have been selected for such a post. It was quite possible that it would be a dangerous one. It was sure to be altogether different from the ordinary life of a subaltern in the ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... yourself in a howling wilderness because of him, he ought to belong more to you than to his sacred Frontier Force! But Theo seems to be the private property of half the regiment! There's his chief friend Major Wyndham, and the Boy, his subaltern, he thinks the world of them; and they seem to live in the house. Then there's a tiresome old Ressaldar always coming over to do Persian with him for his Higher Proficiency exam; and I don't find it half amusing to be one of a mixed crowd ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... we took 130 prisoners and released some forty of our own men who had been surrounded and captured, including a subaltern of artillery who had been cut off while observing from a ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... prodigal. Yet he contrived to be out when the dog-cart conveying the said prodigal, and Mr. Decies of the 101st Lancers—a friend of Guy Quayle, home on leave from India, whence he brought news of his fellow-subaltern—actually drove up to the door. When, pushed thereto by an accusing conscience, he did at last come in, Lord Fallowfeild easily persuaded himself that there really was not time before dinner for the momentous conversation. Moreover, being very full of the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... their tasks, as the best possible way of keeping them out of mischief. As he drew near, he heard firing, and the first sight which greeted him was a negro shot down. The village was in possession of a small company of soldiers, without even a subaltern to control them. Without pretence of a trial, they were shooting the people one by one, as they were pointed out to them by a petty constable. On their march, these very soldiers had been ordered to fire upon every one who ran away, and they fired ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... and claimed that persecution should be conducted with method and gravity. But men do not stop at pleasure in evil: one abyss draws on another. The way had been opened to brutal and cynical passions, to the spirit of denunciation, to low and mean fanaticism; the infamies with which the subaltern agents polluted themselves recoiled upon the chiefs who did not repress them, and on this proud government that did not blush to add to the odium of persecution the shame of faithlessness! The chiefs of the dragonades judged ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... and Major Taunton has dropped. The encounter closing within ten minutes afterwards on the arrival of assistance to the two Englishmen, "the best friend man ever had" is laid upon a coat spread out upon the wet clay by the heart-riven subaltern, whom years before his generous counsel had rescued from ignominious destruction. Three little spots of blood are visible on the shirt of Major Taunton as he lies there with the breast ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... commander halted his men. "Lieutenant Watson," he addressed the senior subaltern, "be so good as to request attendance by the prefect or alcalde.... And for heaven's sake, fasten your coat, sir," he ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... subaltern at La Rue's who had been given so many commissions by his brother officers to bring back tobacco, soap, and underclothes that all his money save five francs was gone. He still had two days' leave of absence, ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... his debt, as it maybe presumed, magnificently; made him accept three hundred thousand francs as a reimbursement from the Emperor for the thirty thousand lent to the subaltern of artillery; and besides, made him director-general of the gardens of the crown, with a salary of thirty thousand francs. He also gave a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... himself; for numberless informers but distract or cloud information, as glasses which multiply will for the most part be found also to obscure. Of a life, too, which for the last twenty years was passed in the very front of literature, every leader of a literary company, whether officer or subaltern, naturally becomes either author or critic, so that little less than the recollection that it was once the request of the deceased, and twice the desire of those whose will I ever delighted to comply with, should have engaged me to add my little book ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... called the peerage of the little community, must be the Captains: the company of each Captain must consist of those peasants who lived on his land, and whose names, faces, connections, and characters, were perfectly known to him: the subaltern officers must be selected among the Duinhe Wassels, proud of the eagle's feather: the henchman was an excellent orderly: the hereditary piper and his sons formed the band: and the clan became at ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that you had orders to report on position of troops; and felt, I admit, rather angry that Gambetta should wish to send subaltern officers to inspect matters concerning ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... named Mavari by the natives on the Orinoco, and is the same with the Aherman of the ancient Persians. To him every evil is attributed. If a horse tire, he has been ridden by Guecubu. In an earthquake, Guecubu has given the world a shock; and the like in all things. The Ulmens, or subaltern deities of their celestial hierarchy, resemble the genii, and are supposed to have the charge of earthly things, and to form, in concert with the benevolent Meulen, a counterpoise to the prodigious power of the malignant Guecuba. These ulmens of the spiritual ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... fountains of dust spurt from the ground around. And then a great feeling comes to him that he would like to be out of it all. There is no glory in it. The sun is hotter than he ever felt it before. His water-bottle is finished, and his mouth is clammy. A young subaltern with an eye-glass, no end of a toff, walks along the front of the line, and he watches with interested delight microscopic ducklets of his head, synchronising with whistles. Just as the toff is opposite him, he spins round suddenly, exclaiming, "By Jove!" and falls down ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... smaller &c. (decrease) 36, (contract) 195; hide its diminished head, retire into the shade, yield the palm, play second fiddle, be upstaged, take a back seat. Adj. inferior, smaller; small &c. 32; minor, less, lesser, deficient, minus, lower, subordinate, secondary; secondrate &c. (imperfect) 651; sub, subaltern; thrown into the shade; weighed in the balance and found wanting; not fit to hold a candle to, can't hold a candle to. least, smallest &c. (see little, small &c. 193); lowest. diminished &c. (decreased) 36; reduced &c. (contracted) 195; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 105-cm. battery, a young Major von Markel in command, a most charming fellow. I spent all to-day in the advanced observing position with a young subaltern called Grabel, also a nice young fellow. I was in position at 6 a.m., and, as apparently is common here, mist hides everything from view until the sun attains a certain strength. Our battery was supporting ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... it that the side of the book which showed my takings was so clear and easily to be understood, but the side which showed their takings wrapt in mystery and hieroglyphics such as not even the world's leading financiers and mathematicians could hope to unravel? My subaltern, being consulted, agreed with me; I would have had him carpeted by the C.O. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... My father knew a subaltern officer of that name when he was with his regiment in Canada. It would be curious if the person here turned out to be the same man, and if that young lady ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... to the Army the melancholy intelligence with feelings of the most profound sorrow. The long, arduous, and faithful military services in which President Harrison has been engaged since the first settlement of the Western country, from the rank of a subaltern to that of a commander in chief, are too well known to require a recital of them here. It is sufficient to point to the fields of Tippecanoe, the banks of the Miami, and the Thames, in Upper Canada, to recall to many of the soldiers of the present Army the glorious ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson
... and even Grandpa had hobbled to the edge of the garden to meet the soldier boys home on their first leave. Christina had known they would be in khaki, but when a trim young private of artillery in jingling spurs and bandolier, and a smart young subaltern in shining boots and straps and belt and what not leaped from the democrat and charged upon her; instead of running to meet them, their sister put her head down against the gate post and burst into tears. Somehow the sight of Sandy in the uniform of his country's service had overwhelmed ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... rose, but I have lived with her," responded Forrester, sententiously. "That's the principle of the thing. When a subaltern arrives laden with gold, the barrack-yard is a perfect garden ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence |
