Arthur Dunbar, G.C.B., is yet alive, reposing on his well-earned laurels, at a retired mansion in the marine village of Portobello. Though frequently and most severely wounded in battle, besides being deprived of an arm in Lord Rodney's engagement during the year '82, the Admiral's health continues unimpaired and his cheerfulness invariable, at the advanced age of 70." 

 "Pshaw! stuff and nonsense! Some enemy is resolved to make a laughing-stock of me in my old age!" exclaimed he, angrily pointing out the paragraph to his gay young relative, Louis De Crespigny, who was familiarly leaning over the high back of his chair; and then crumpling up the offending Courant with an obvious wish that it might be consumed in the flames—"I hope this is only the work of some wretched penny-a-liner; but if I even suspected that my conceited, good-looking scoundrel of a nephew had a hand in the jest, I would cut him off with a shilling,—or rather without one, for I could scarcely raise so much as a shilling to leave him, and he knows that. This is most thoroughly ridiculous! I, who have been dead, buried, and forgotten for years, to be made as conspicuous here, as a hair-dresser's wig-block! The editor shall be prosecuted,—horse-whipped,—or—or made as absurd as he has made me!" 

 "Why really, Admiral, I wish he had as much good to say of us all, and then the sooner he paragraphs about me the better!—'We are happy to inform our readers that the agreeable and fascinating Cornet De Crespigny, of the 15th Light Hussars, now in his eighteenth year, is still alive!'—the public likes to know the exact age of distinguished men, such as you and I, Admiral!" 

 "The public is an ass!" replied Sir Arthur, breaking into a smile; "and perhaps I am another, to mind what is said at all, but that rascal of an editor has made me ten years older than I am; besides which, though a grey-haired Admiral of sixty-four is not probably much addicted to blushing, he really has put my modest merit out of countenance. I would rather pay the newspapers any day for overlooking than for praising me. We ought to live or die for our country; but now, when I am no longer needed, let me stay in peace on the shelf, like," added he, giving a comic smile at his empty sleeve, "like a cracked tea-cup with the handle off!" 

 "But, Sir Arthur!" replied the young Cornet warmly, "you who never turned your back on friend or foe, are not very likely to remain quietly on the shelf, as long as every man who lives must respect you, and every man who dies continues to appoint you, as my father did, his executor, the trustee of his 

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