"Subaltern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Woolwich in 1848. He obtained a commission in the royal engineers on June 23, 1852, and, after the usual course of study at Chatham was quartered for a short time at Pembroke Dock. In December, 1854, he received his orders for the Crimea, and reached Balaklava on January 1, 1855. As a young engineer subaltern serving in the trenches, his daring was conspicuous, while his special aptitude for obtaining a personal knowledge of the movements of the enemy was a matter of common observation among his brother officers. He was wounded on June 6, 1855, and was present at the attack on the Redan on June ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... 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 which he ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... leading institution, to answer the call of the country—that mathematics and military science had formed a considerable part of his studies—that he had had some hopes, when he enlisted, of obtaining the grade of a subaltern officer, when he should succeed in procuring sufficient enlistments—that by his personal efforts and fervid eloquence he had already succeeded in enlisting more than fifty men for the regiment with which he was connected, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... how, Maurice and Jean found themselves once more behind the hedge, with the remnant of their company. Some forty men at the outside were all that remained, with Lieutenant Rochas as their commander, and the regimental standard was with them; the subaltern who carried it had furled the silk about the staff in order to try to save it. They made their way along the hedge, as far as it extended, to a cluster of small trees upon a hillside, where Rochas made them halt and reopen fire. The ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... in the way of the subaltern who wants to be a General before he has smelt powder; and it stands (and should stand) in everybody's way who applies for pay or position before he has served his apprenticeship and proved himself. Your sister's course is perfectly plain. Let her enclose this letter to Maj. J. B. Pond, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... FATHER—After the great public news of the fall of Sebastopol, have you any ears left for small items of private intelligence from insignificant subaltern officers? Prepare, if you have, for a sudden and a startling announcement. How shall I write the words? How shall I tell you that I am ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... Whether he thought the owners of the ship denied it to him, on account of its clotting his clear, sunny complexion; or whether he deemed that, on so long a voyage in such marketless waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore was not for him, a subaltern; however it was, Flask, alas! was a ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Man?" she asked in friendly reference to Rowsley's commanding officer. "Oh Rose, I knew there was something I wanted to ask you. Will Spillsby be able to play on the Fourth?" Spillsby, a brother subaltern and a famous bat, had twisted his ankle at the nets, and Rowsley in his last letter had been uncertain whether he would be well enough to play the Sappers at ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... 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 marital infidelities ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... was the want of a military engineer. The person who held that position had been sent from France. He was a master mason, and had no knowledge of engineering. It had been the same story in Calcutta. Drake's two engineers had been a subaltern in the military and a young covenanted servant. Renault had to supervise the ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... impossible," continued this gentleman, "that I should assist in procuring Mr Arnott such a renovation? Is there no subaltern part I can perform to facilitate the project? for I will either hide or seek with any boy in the parish; and for a Q in the corner, ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... 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 previously asking papa's ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the senses is a world of shows; it does not exist for itself, but has a symbolic character; and a true prudence or law of shows recognizes the co-presence of other laws and knows that its own office is subaltern; knows that it is surface and not centre where it works. Prudence is false when detached. It is legitimate when it is the Natural History of the soul incarnate, when it unfolds the beauty of laws within the narrow scope of ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... welcome his 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 the devious trail through ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... as Sidonia, or coolly, as Lord Monmouth, but always calmly and with no point of passion in his regard: the Eskdales, Villebecques, Ormsbys, Bessos, Marneys, Meltons, and Mirabels, the Bohuns and St. Aldegondes and Grandisons, the Tadpoles and the Tapers, the dominant and subaltern humanity of the world. All these are drawn with peculiar boldness of line, precision of touch, and clearness of intention. And as with his men so is it with his women: the finest are not those he likes ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... difficulty with which we have to deal, is a certain nervousness in the subaltern branches of the corps; as the hour of some design draws near, these chicken-souled conspirators appear to suffer some revulsion of intent; and frequently despatch to the authorities, not indeed specific denunciations, but vague anonymous warnings. But for this purely accidental ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... kept his slippered feet on the top of the stove, and whose costume consisted of a kilt, a British warm, a grey hospital dressing-gown, and four pairs of socks, told the story of the Camerons at First Ypres, and of the Lowland subaltern who knew no Gaelic and suddenly found himself encouraging his men with some ancient Highland rigmarole. The poor chap had a racking bronchial cough, which suggested that his country might well use him on some warmer battle-ground than Flanders. He seemed ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... two parties; the lovers of the French Monarchy, and those who desired its overthrow. He sided openly with the latter. "Had I been a general," said Napoleon in the evening of his life, "I might have adhered to the king: being a subaltern, I joined ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... what he would do with a subaltern of Maurice's type. He would take him out shooting and put the fear of God into him. If this were done often and systematically enough, the subaltern would improve or send in his papers. But Davos did not offer equal ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... nothing better, pecaire! but he had those Peruvians on his hands for the rest of the season; and, replying to his old friend, who expressed surprise at seeing him accept the functions of a courier, a subaltern,— ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... his return to England about a twelvemonth since, had obtained the command of a cavalry regiment. Passionately fond of his profession, he entered into its minutest duties with a zeal not exceeded by the youngest and poorest subaltern in ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... She was what Hilda had definitely renounced being. And there stood Hilda, immature, graceless, harsh, inelegant, dowdy, holding the letter between her inky fingers, in the midst of all that hard masculine mess,—and a part of it, the blindly devoted subaltern, who could expect none of the ritual of homage given to women, who must sit and work and stand and strain and say 'yes,' and pretend stiffly that she was a sound, serviceable, thick-skinned imitation man among men! If Hilda had been a valkyrie or a saint she might have felt no envy ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... an old frail woman carefully out of the train and handing out her baggage, giving chocolates to children, interesting themselves in their fellow- travellers. At one place I saw a proud and anxious father, himself an old soldier, I think, seeing off a jolly young subaltern to the front, with hardly suppressed tears; the young man was full of excitement and delight, but did his best to cheer up the spirits of "Daddy," as he fondly called him. I felt very proud of our soldiers, their simplicity and kindness and real ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Many 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 in luxuries which in any future period of your life you probably will not be able to ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... very time had a protection in his pocket, was put to death without question. A boy of eight years, who fell at Campbell's feet imploring mercy, and offering to serve him for life, was stabbed to the heart by one Drummond a subaltern officer. Eight-and-thirty persons suffered in this manner, the greater part of whom were surprised in their beds, and hurried into eternity before they had time to implore the divine mercy. The design was to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... manner of the subaltern underwent a quick change. He at once became the stern, businesslike representative of ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... in 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 ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... his neighbours, he had taken no interest in the war, which had seemed as remote to him as though he had lived in North Dakota. One day a Zeppelin dropped a bomb on that village, whereupon the able-bodied males enlisted to a man, and he with them. A subaltern in his company was an Eton boy. "We just couldn't think of 'im as an orficer, sir; in the camps 'e used to play with us like a child. And then we went to France. And one night when we was wet to the skin and the Boschs was droppin' shell all ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... limits of the pay which Government has thought proper to allow them. They are thereby more led to temperance, to improve themselves by study, to mind their duty and how best to promote the service of their country. I served sixteen years as a subaltern officer in the army, made long sea voyages with the Regiment, furnished myself with sea stores, camp equipage and every other necessary equipments [and] my Father nor any Relation during that time was never [put to] one farthing's expense upon my ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... mother had died not long after Nelly's father, and her little income had come to her son. So now what with Nelly's small portion, and his mother's two hundred and fifty a year in addition to his pay, the young subaltern thought himself almost rich—in comparison with so many others. His father, who had died while he was still at school, had been a master at Harrow, and he had been brought up in a refined home, with high standards and ideals. A scholarship at Oxford at one ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bathing-places, the 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 introduction of this ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... another, as "of Pennyburn Mill, co. Derry." No other person of his name appears in my whole Army List; although the "Diary" preserved in the Harleian Miscellany (old edit., vol. vii. p. 482.) erroneously suggests a subaltern of his name. In the titular Court of St. Germains, two of the name of Sheldon were of the Board of Green Cloth. Dr. Gilbert Sheldon was Archbishop of Canterbury in the middle of the seventeenth century; and the Sheldons are shown by Burke to be still an existing family at Brailes House ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... said Freddy confidentially to his ally and adviser, the junior subaltern of the detachment at Enniscar, who had come over to see the hounds, "that I'm afraid Patsey Crimmeen—the boy whom I'm training to whip to me, you know"—(as a matter of fact, the Whip was a year older than the Master)—"is beginning to drink a bit. When I came down ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... whose virtues had earned this charming girl, and whose high position could command the services of a Highland subaltern to do his station work for him, was dictating ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... were genuine representatives of the most vigorous and masculine element of the battalion, to show off the strength and muscular power of their legs. A lieutenant jumped the aqueduct. A captain, to be in no way behind the subaltern, did the same, but he got his feet wet. His amour propre being excited, he took off his coat and jumped it again easily. The others did the same. The scene then assumed the appearance of the Olympian games, or ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... is again at the head. All are on foot. "Left front into line, double time;" the first company throws its long double rank from curb to curb, Drummond, its commander, striding at its front; Wing, his subaltern, anxiously watching him from among the file-closers. Already they have reached the rearmost of the rioting groups and, with warning cries and imprecations, these are scurrying to either side and falling into the hands of the accompanying police. Thicker, denser grows the ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... accompanied him to the palace. Neither of the two, general nor subaltern, spoke for a long ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... that a subaltern was lucky who could mount one step of the promotion ladder in his first ten years; that a major at fifty, a colonel at sixty, and a general at seventy were quite the usual thing. And they realized that the pay ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... subalterns extended his hand and laid it on his sleeve. Plessy turned upon him angrily, and the subaltern withdrew his hand. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... how they run!" exclaimed Lieutenant Brown of the Grenadiers, who supported him. "Who run?" demanded the General like one roused from sleep. "The enemy, sir," responded the subaltern. "Go, one of you, to Colonel Burton," returned Wolfe, with an earnestness that detained the spirit in his almost lifeless body; "tell him to march Webb's regiment down to the St. Charles to cut off their ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... Wally chattered away like a magpie, asking questions, telling Irish fishing-stories, and other stories of adventures in Ireland, hazarding wild opinions about the war, and generally manifesting a cheerful disregard of the fact that the tired man opposite him was not a subaltern as irresponsible as himself. Somehow, the weariness died out of Major Hunt's eyes. He began to joke in his turn, and to tell queer yarns of the trenches: and presently, indeed, the whole party seemed to be infected by the same spirit, so that the old walls of the Cheshire Cheese echoed ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... considerable uneasiness mingled with some gossip throughout the garrison. It was already midnight before they arrived, and then with horses blown and trembling with exhaustion, and the whole party bearing every sign of fatigue and disturbance. The colonel said a few sharp, decisive words to the subaltern, who, pale and reticent, plucked at his little moustache, but took the whole blame upon himself. HE and Mrs. Lascelles had, he said, outridden the trooper and got lost; it was late when Cassidy (the trooper) found them, but it was no fault of HIS, and they had ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... in effect three French men of war, with two ships of the Company, commanded by M. Champmelin. These ships brought upwards of eight hundred men, and thirty officers, as well superior as subaltern, all of them old and faithful servants of the King, in order to remain in Louisiana. The Spaniards, finding their error, fled to Pensacola, to carry the news of this succour being arrived for ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... 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 ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... which I could be reproved, all that I said and did was watched and secretly reported. Under a despotic government, the spy is as necessary as the corporal. The annoyance of this reporting is, that the secrecy exists only for the one whom it concerns; while the subaltern officers and servants receive hints that such a person is kept under constant surveillance. When it was found that no occasion offered to find fault with me, our administrative inspector was removed, and a surly old corporal put in his place, with the hint that the government ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... 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 ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... Directory had not confessed for forty years. In February, 1830, the priest obtained the Dauphiness' protection for Oscar Husson, son of Mme. Clapart by her first husband, and that young man was promoted to a sub-lieutenancy in a regiment where he had been serving as subaltern. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... two miles to run; but the navigation was delicate, the entrance to this northern anchorage was not only narrow and shoal, but lay east and west, so that the schooner must be nicely handled to be got in. I think I was a good, prompt subaltern, and I am very sure that Hands was an excellent pilot; for we went about and about, and dodged in, shaving the banks, with a certainty and a neatness that was ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... notwithstanding 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
... the enemy, turning to account the difficult terrain, was able to secure the maximum of profit from the advantages which the superiority of his subaltern complements gave him. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... 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
... him furiously to recover the weapon]. Dog of a subaltern, restore that pistol and ...
— Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 he shoved the troop ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... any remembrance more definite than an impression that this memorial was something which had belonged to a descendant of Joab Brice, who had been in his youth a soldier in the old French War, and later a subaltern in the "State line" during ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... assistance, knelt beside him, and bent over as if to bind up a wound. In that position he remained motionless so long that Lieutenant Johnson, who had been firing steadily with a wounded soldier's rifle until twice hit himself, went to see if he could give any help. He found his brother subaltern dead in the act of binding up a wound as he knelt over the dying field-officer's body. At that moment Lieutenant Johnson received his third wound, and had to be carried from ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... A young subaltern was acting for him. My sergeant pal tipped me off. As I have said, I was an old soldier with all that that implies. He marched me up to the officer, already more or less at sea about his new duties. I asked for money. He was aware ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... the moment, you will be sorry that you are not going with it, but I can assure you that this business will be vastly more useful to you in your profession, than anything you would be likely to meet with as a cavalry subaltern in Spain." ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... artillery 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 more permanent ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... put in bottles until it fermented and became worse in odor than sulphureted hydrogen. At reveille roll-call every morning this fermented liquor was dealt out to the company, and as it was my duty, in my capacity of subaltern, to attend these roll-calls and see that the men took their ration of pulque, I always began the duty by drinking a cup of the repulsive stuff myself. Though hard to swallow, its well-known specific qualities in the prevention and cure of scurvy were familiar to all, so every man in the ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... offensive operations with such a force, the young officer, aided by the one subaltern, made the best disposition possible for defence, trusting to hold the building until the fugitives should return with aid from Brunswick. Those who had their muskets were stationed at the few windows, while the dragoons ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... as related in the previous chapter, we were attacked by a detachment of General Kitchener's force from Belfast. This kept me busy all day, and I delegated two of my subaltern officers to carry out the execution. At dusk the condemned man was blindfolded and conducted to the side of an open grave, where twelve burghers fired a volley, and death was instantaneous. I am told that De Kock met his fate with ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... he appeared perfectly satisfied, and all went off well. After his review he invited himself to our dinner-party, and honoured our repast with the further addition of a kid stew. He turned out to be one of the ex-Company's officers, a subaltern of eighteen years' service, FIFTEEN of which had been spent away from his regiment on the staff. He was with his corps, however, when it mutinied, and escaped without much difficulty. The unfortunate colonel of the regiment, finding that none of his ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... 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
... 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 praegustator, who tastes the viands beforehand ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... judges, were openly heard to confess in their interchange of confidences. There is always much camp chaff and yarning amongst "Tommies"—and their officers, too, for that matter—at the expense of England's picked battalions. "Have you seen the 'Queen's Company,' my man," asked a subaltern of the Grenadiers one day of a private in the Northumberland Fusiliers. Now the "Queen's Company" are all over six feet in stature, and there was a friendly rivalry in grenadiership between them and certain Fusilier regiments. The question was asked when the troops were marching ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... Hughes, the Minister of Militia, sat in the 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 ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... officers returning from their 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 ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... Three Musqueteers lasted, he had come constantly to her dressing-room, and afterwards she promised to find other pleasant reading; but after such excitement, it was not easy to find anything that did not appear dry. As the daughter of a Peninsular man, she thought nothing so charming as the Subaltern, and Gilbert seemed to enjoy it; but by the time he had heard all her oral traditions of the war by way of notes, his attendance began to slacken; he stayed out later, and always brought excuses—Mr. Salsted had kept him, he had been with ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whether speaking by confessions or by the varied memoranda (orders to subaltern officers, resolutions adopted by meetings, records of military councils, petitions, or suggestions on the public service, addressed to the king, &c.), abandoned in the palace at Delhi, the soldier can tell no more than he knew, which, under any theory of the case, must ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... subaltern of the North Surrey Light Infantry, had been shot through the thigh in the covered waterway ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... notorious outsiders. When Linton wanted him to come and play fives after school, he declined on the ground that he was teaing with Chadwick, of Appleby's. Now in the matter of absolute outsiderishness Chadwick, of Appleby's, was to Merrett, of Seymour's, as captain is to subaltern. Linton was horrified, and ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Penn Symons is killed! Well, no one would have laid down his life more gladly in such a cause. Twenty years ago the merest chance saved him from the massacre at Isandhlwana, and Death promoted him in an afternoon from subaltern to senior captain. Thenceforward his rise was rapid. He commanded the First Division of the Tirah Expeditionary Force among the mountains with prudent skill. His brigades had no misfortunes: his rearguards ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... follow the windings of wickedness when burrowing in the dark. But if not a Fouche or a Vidocq, he is certainly an able man; for, in a section where able men are as plenty as apple-blossoms in June, he was chosen to represent his district in the State Senate, and, entering the army a subaltern officer, rose, before the Battle of Perryville, to the command of a regiment. At that battle a Rebel bullet entered his shoulder, and crushed the bones of his right elbow. This disabled him for field duty, and so it came about ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... course, putting everything else aside, I could not think of standing in your way in life. I love you much too well for that, dear Madeline, and you are too beautiful and delicate to be the wife of a poor subaltern with little beside his pay. I can honestly say that I hope you will be happy. I don't ask you to think of me too often, as that might make you less so, but perhaps sometimes when you are quiet you will spare your old lover a thought ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... difficult to make a brain picture of that rapid succession of feats of arms. At the station itself the "Tommys" buzzed about like bees, and the officers were having tea or dinner, or both combined, in the refreshment-room. One overheard scraps of conversation, from a subaltern to his superior officer: "A capital bag to-day, sir. Forty Mausers and ten thousand rounds of ammunition." Then someone else remarked that a railway-train from the South passed yesterday, riddled with bullets, and recounted the marvellous escape its occupants had had, which ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... vive le Capitain; he, after this, desired they would chuse their subaltern Officers, and give them Power to consult and conclude upon what might be for the common Interest, and bind themselves down by an Oath to agree to what such Officers and he should determine: This they readily ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... subaltern friend of mine landed at Gibraltar for a few hours, and he was anxious to be able to say that he had been to Spain. So he walked along the Isthmus to Ceuta, where the British and Spanish sentries faced one another, and directly the Spanish soldier turned his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... the decrepitude of age, feebly aided by female hands, gave ample opportunity to gratify the ardent minds panting to exchange the tame drudgery of school and college for the limited, but to them world-wide, authority of the subaltern's sword and epaulet. There seemed to them but one road to advancement. The profession of arms was the sole pursuit which opened a career bounded only by the wildest dreams of ambition. What had been could be; and the fortunate soldier might find no check in the progressive honors of his course, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... might be kept for "exchanges," in case the enemy make any notable captures. For instance, five of us might be considered the equivalent of an artillery mule; a platoon would balance a Territorial subaltern; and the whole bunch could be offered for (say) the return of the Albert Memorial. But the most popular impression is that we shall be asked to give some sort of display in the centre, in order to lure the Germans on. And while we are forming fours strongly and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 28, 1914 • Various
... himself, and steeped in ancient opinions, his coat, won in a forgotten age, interested him only less than his Mutiny medal—his sole personal claim to public honor. He had served in youth as a soldier, but was still a subaltern when his father died and ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... the garrison were killed, including two officers. The prisoners amounted to five hundred and forty-three, among whom were one lieutenant colonel, four captains, and twenty subaltern officers. The military stores taken in the fort ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... this application: the first is, the clamour against his giving all commands to young or improper officers is extreme; Holmes, appointed admiral of the blue but six weeks ago, has writ a warm letter on the chapter of subaltern commanders: the second, and possibly connected in his mind with the former, may be this; he would like to refuse you, and then say, you had asked when it was too late; and at the same time would have to say that he would have employed you if you had asked sooner. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... more formal than that which is derived from the object, as stated above (A. 6). Therefore the species derived from the end is contained under the species derived from the object, as the most specific species is contained under the subaltern genus. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... 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
... so and so, I perfectly remember." So with this memorial of poor Hood, it may have, no doubt, a greater interest for me than for others, for I was fighting, so to speak, in a different part of the field, and engaged, a young subaltern, in the Battle of Life, in which Hood fell, young still, and covered with glory. "The Bridge of Sighs" was his Corunna, his Heights of Abraham—sickly, weak, wounded, he fell in the full blaze and fame of that ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... prey to the birds and beasts; only let me first bury my prince." Medoro pronounced these words with an air so sweet and tender that a heart of stone would have been moved by them. Zerbino was so to the bottom of his soul. He was on the point of uttering words of mercy, when a cruel subaltern, forgetting all respect to his commander, plunged his lance into the breast of the young Moor. Zerbino, enraged at his brutality, turned upon the wretch to take vengeance, but he saved himself by a ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... was a slender, fair-haired, rather delicate-looking youngster in the early twenties. It was the Prince of Wales, but, so far as receiving any attention from the hurrying throng was concerned, he might as well have been an unknown subaltern. For it is an extremely democratic army, and royalty receives from it scant consideration; Lloyd George is of far more importance than King George to the ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... told us of this. We've been trapped,' said a subaltern. 'Aren't the camel guns ever going to ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... he had raised himself upon his elbow and was listening eagerly to something else. His attention had been caught by the conversation of a couple of officers who were coming up from the water-side. One was a young army subaltern, fresh from home, very innocent and well-meaning, but belonging to that class of youth who, because of a serene consciousness of vast inward resources, is certain to fall a prey to circumstances. His companion was slightly older, a young officer of the ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... 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 ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... had known from my school-days, Frederick Thistlethwayte, coming into a huge fortune when a subaltern in a marching regiment, had impulsively married a certain Miss Laura Bell. In her early days, when she made her first appearance in London and in Paris, Laura Bell's extraordinary beauty was as much admired by painters as by men of the world. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... and Isis, he had not the faintest odor of myth about him; absolutely bourgeois, he lacked even that atmosphere of burlesque that surrounded Claud; he was not even vicious. But he was a soldier, a brave one; and if, with the acquired economy of a subaltern who has been obliged to live on his pay, he kept his purse-strings tight, they were loose enough if a friend were in need, and he paid no one the compliment of a lie. He was projected sheer out of the republic. The better part of his life had been passed under arms; the delicate sensuality of ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... of meriting their 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 latter were conceived ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... not 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 we only had the power and gift to seize that wonderful ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... came the move to the Somme and the July of 1916, when the average life of the infantry subaltern in France was only worth three weeks. Many, indeed, were killed within a week of their crossing the Channel, on the very first day of entering the trenches and taking part in the British advance. The 23rd Royal Fusiliers were engaged in the whole of the desperate fighting on the ...
— The 23rd (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (First Sportsman's) - A Record of its Services in the Great War, 1914-1919 • Fred W. Ward
... had been languishing mortally into nonsense. The darkness of his 'Burke' becomes visible darkness under the glimmering that steals upon it from the desperate commonplaces of this 'Fox.' Fox is painted exactly as he would have been painted fifty years ago by any pet subaltern of the Whig club, enjoying free pasture in Devonshire House. The practised reader knows well what is coming. Fox is 'formed after the model of the ancients'—Fox is 'simple'—Fox is 'natural'—Fox is 'chaste'—Fox is 'forcible;' why yes, in a sense, Fox is even 'forcible:' but then, to ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... absent; his deputy, the second lieutenant, Don Joseph Sanchez, received my envoy with much cordiality, and referred in a very flattering manner to my former visit to this port, in the ship Rurik. Don Sanchez was at that time a brave subaltern; but had since, under republican colours, risen in the service. He promised to lend us every assistance in his power, and proved his friendly intentions by an immediate present of ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... "The enemy are continuing to fortify the coast, Sir," said the subaltern. "I don't care if they fiftify it," roared his commanding officer; "it'll make no difference." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... not the 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 of Bendemeer ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... with their masters. The two descendants, as they call themselves, of the house of Chatillon, insist that this Chatillon, who married an attorney's daughter, is descended from the illegitimate branches of that family. His son was a subaltern in the Body Guard. In the summer time, when the young officers went to bathe, they used to take young Chatillon with them to guard their clothes, and for this office they gave him a crown for his supper. Monsieur having taken this ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... by nothing but an invasion; and it would be almost as rational to wait the growth of an oak, as to wait the signing of your commission; but it shall be done in my own way. I have means which can make the tardy quick, and open the eyes of the blind. You shall be a subaltern in the Guards, unless you are in too much haste to be a general, and get yourself shot by some Parisian cobbler in the purloined uniform of a rifleman. But, let me tell you one fact, and I might indorse this piece of intelligence, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... she would be the creditor of this remorseless combination without any prospect of repaying them. But all resistance was useless, she was convinced; she had to submit or she would be expunged from life. She who had fancied herself so powerful was but the lowly, abject subaltern at the beck of a preponderating power of which she understood no more the details ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... and 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, and gave her ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... of opening other people's letters," the subaltern remarked pleasantly. "It's a bad habit and will grow on you. When you go home you'll never be able to resist it. You'll be unfit for ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... dangers that lay in the mere discussion of the case, commanded Fra Domenico to withdraw his acceptance of the challenge and secede from the affair. The Franciscan declared himself content: he had not directed his challenge to any subaltern, but ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... 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 ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... and 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, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... sourly. "I'm only a subaltern—a bit of machinery that is wound up sometimes by my superior officers, and then I turn round till I'm stopped. Subalterns are not expected to have any brains, or to think ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... bounds of probability that he should be willing, at the bidding of his guardian, to adopt as Mentor his very correct and sententious cousin, a poor subaltern, and the next in the entail? Depend upon it, it is a fiction created either by papa's hopes or Philip's self-complacency, or else the unfortunate youth must have been brought very low by strait-lacing ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a fellow-subaltern attempted to leave the Castle grounds by way of the private gate in the western wall, only to be driven back by careful watchers on the outside. A second attempt was made at two o'clock. This time they went through the crypt into the secret underground passage. As they crawled ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 be added; except concerning the main point, That the catastrophe ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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 to seize my person, my instruments, and, above ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... read the charge," said the subaltern, "but perhaps the lady would like to retire first," ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... 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
... 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 windows of the chateau, and stood ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... Subaltern of the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards, at present stationed at Rawul Pindi in India. He won the Regimental Cup Steeplechase this year on an Australian mare of his own. Australian horses are called 'Walers' in India, from the circumstance ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... 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, ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson
... 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, namely, a villain half in liquor. There was a lurking ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... his lady absolute. She abdicated without a word or a struggle. "Go to Mr. Moore, ask Mr. Moore," was her answer when applied to for orders. Never was wooer of wealthy bride so thoroughly absolved from the subaltern part, so inevitably compelled to ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... and Portuguese take the field. Count La Lippe is sent over to command them. Brigadier Burgoyne surprizes [sic] Valenca d'Alcantara in Spain, and destroys one of their best regiments there. A sejeant [sic] and six men only engage a Spanish subaltern with twenty-five dragoons, unbroken, kill six of their men, and bring in the rest prisoners, with every horse of the party. Soon after Brigadier Burgoyne and Colonel Lee surprize the Spanish camp at Villa ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... 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 ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... deprive the Crown of a most valuable prerogative. If such a brevet as the one proposed were to lead to great additional expense, the Queen could understand the objection on the ground of economy; but the giving brevet rank to a few subaltern officers is too trifling a matter to alarm the Government. Perhaps the number might be reduced even, but to deviate from the established precedents for the first time altogether in this case, and that after the excellent behaviour ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... sufficiently to eat their bully beef and biscuits. It had been a trying march for all, although the column had accomplished only twelve miles in eleven hours. As an instance of the general weariness, it is recorded that a subaltern, during the meal, was asked to pass the mustard, and fell asleep with his arm outstretched and ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... him to be the prophet of the true God, the supreme King of Israel, [for they were still under the theocracy,] which was no less than impiety, rebellion, and treason, in the highest degree: nor would the command of a subaltern, or inferior captain, contradicting the commands of the general, when the captain and the soldiers both knew it to be so, as I suppose, justify or excuse such gross rebellion and disobedience in soldiers at this day. Accordingly, when Saul commanded his guards to slay ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... openly plundered, and no portion of what is taken from them is applied to any uses of local public utility, as roads, irrigation, encouragement of commerce and industry and the like; what is not sent home to the Sultan goes into the private pouches of the pasha and his many subaltern officials. This is like taking the milk and omitting to feed the cow. The consequence is, the people lose their interest in work of any kind, leave off striving for an increase of property which they will not be permitted ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... Christian.[10] One of Christian's captains was a stout old Marylander, of Welsh blood, named Evan Shelby; and Shelby's son Isaac,[11] a stalwart, stern-visaged young man, who afterwards played a very prominent part on the border, was a subaltern in his company, in which Robertson likewise served as a sergeant. Although without experience of drill, it may be doubted if a braver or physically finer set of men were ever ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... chums as we were destined to become, we were utterly unknown and indifferent to each other; but in point of regimental reputation at the time, Van had decidedly the best of it. He was a celebrity at head-quarters, I a subaltern at an isolated post. He had apparently become acclimated, and was rapidly winning respect for himself and dollars for his backers; I was winning neither for anybody, and doubtless losing both,—they go together, somehow. Van was living on metaphorical clover down near Tucson; I was roughing it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... subaltern they called Baby Appleby, he was so white-skinned and light-haired. Well, one night we had to turn out for an alarm in the dark, and charged two miles up to the rifle pits of the first line. When we came back, the colonel halted ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... better in two antecedent duels, for the vindication of his lovely and terrible young wife. He perished on the field, critically admiring the stroke to which he owed his death. A week after Harry's burial his widow was asked in marriage by his colonel. Captains, and a giddy subaltern likewise, disputed claims to possess her. She, however, decided to arrest further bloodshed by quitting the regiment. She always said that she left India to save her complexion; "and people don't know how very candid I am," she added, for the colonel above-mentioned ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
