And as for the employment of time, which often
hangs so heavily on a soldier's hands, really I am ready to say, if
you are neither men of science, nor draughtsmen, nor sportsmen, why,
go and collect beetles. It is not very dignified, I know, nor
exciting: but it will be something to do. It cannot harm you, if
you take, as beetle-hunters do, an indiarubber sheet to lie on; and
it will certainly benefit science. Moreover, there will be a noble
humility in the act. You will confess to the public that you
consider yourself only fit to catch beetles; by which very
confession you will prove yourself fit for much finer things than
catching beetles; and meanwhile, as I said before, you will be at
least out of harm's way. At a foreign barrack once, the happiest
officer I met, because the most regularly employed, was one who
spent his time in collecting butterflies. He knew nothing about
them scientifically--not even their names. He took them simply for
their wonderful beauty and variety; and in the hope, too--in which
he was really scientific--that if he carefully kept every form which
he saw, his collection might be of use some day to entomologists at
home. A most pleasant gentleman he was; and, I doubt not, none the
worse soldier for his butterfly catching. Commendable, also, in my
eyes, was another officer--whom I have not the pleasure of knowing--
who, on a remote foreign station, used wisely to escape from the
temptations of the world into an entirely original and most pleasant
hermitage.
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