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t stated in one of the Calcutta
papers that his mind was affected by the shock to his nervous system.
Some time later an Irishman in the Ninety-Third gave a good reason why
the fright did not turn the head of Sandy Macpherson. In those days
before the railway it took much longer than now for the mails to get
from Cawnpore to Calcutta, and for Calcutta papers to get back again;
and some time,--about a month or six weeks--after the events above
related, when the Calcutta papers got back to camp with the accounts of
the relief of Lucknow, I and Sergeant Macpherson were on outlying piquet
at Futtehghur (I think), and the captain of the piquet gave me a bundle
of the newspapers to read out to the men. In these papers there was an
account of Captain Waterman's being left behind in the Residency, in
which it was stated that the shock had affected his intellect. When I
read this out, the men made some remarks concerning the fright which it
must have given Sandy Macpherson when he found himself alone in the
barracks, and Sandy joining in the remarks, was inclined to boast that
the fright had not upset _his_ intellect, when an Irishman of the
piquet, named Andrew M'Onville, usually called "Handy Andy" in the
company, joining in the conversation, said: "Boys, if Sergeant
Macpherson will give me permission, I will tell you a story that will
show the reason why the fright did not upset his intellect." Permission
was of course granted for the story, and Handy Andy proceeded with his
illustration as follows, as nearly as I can remember it.
"You have all heard of Mr. Gough, the great American Temperance
lecturer. Well, the year before I enlisted he came to Armagh, giving a
course of temperance lectures, and all the public-house keepers and
brewers were up in arms to raise as much opposition as possible against
Mr. Gough and his principles, and in one of his lectures he laid great
stress on the fact that he considered moderation the parent of
drunkenness. A brewer's drayman thereupon went on the platform to
disprove this assertion by actual facts from his own experience, and in
his argument in favour of _moderate_ drinking, he stated that for
upwards of twenty years he had habitually consumed over a gallon of beer
and about a pint of whisky daily, and solemnly asserted that he had
never been the worse for liquor in his life. To which Mr. Gough replied:
'My friends, there is no rule without its exception, and our friend here
is an excep
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