He's Been a Soldier, By His Walk.
THESE words attracted my attention as, waiting the arrival of my own train, I watched a third class carriage and its passengers just ready to start for London. The above remark, "He's been a soldier, by his walk," was in reference to an erect, firm-treading man who had alighted from the train and had evidently been an object of interest to his fellow passengers. "Ay, and he's been a soldier, by the way he carries his pack," said another. "Ay, and by his politeness," observed a third. "Did you see how he touched his cap, only because you gentlemen looked at him? Most of them would have said, 'What are you staring at?'" The train snorted off, the man left the station, and I followed. "Did you hear the remarks of your fellow-travellers, my friend?" He smiled as I repeated them, and said, "Just as it should be, sir—just as it should be! A soldier in plain clothes should be the same as a soldier in uniform. A true soldier ought to walk so as to be known as such wherever he is." He gave me a military salute, and we separated. He left me full of serious thoughts, that came to me in the form of the following questions:— "Is my walk such as to elicit from all with whom I associate the remark, 'He is a soldier, by his walk'?" "I have a burden in the form of a daily cross to carry. Do I bear it so as to leave no doubt where I learned to carry it? Do I bear it soldier-like?" "As a soldier of the Lord Jesus I have a character to sustain. Do I so sustain it, even in the small kindnesses and courtesies of life, as to make the remark of me true, 'He must also be a soldier, by the way he behaves toward all—taking affront at nothing, but supposing the best of our actions?'"