it," said I, so
coolly, that the men--and I do believe the horses--burst out laughing.

He started back--choking almost, and recovered himself only to vent such
a storm of oaths and curses that I was compelled to request Capt.
Rawdon (the captain on duty) to take note of his lordship's words; and
unluckily could not help adding a question which settled my business.
"You were good enough," I said, "to ask me, my lord, from what
blackguard I got my pipe; might I ask from what blackguard you learned
your language?"

This was quite enough. Had I said, "from what GENTLEMAN did your
lordship learn your language?" the point would have been quite as good,
and my Lord Martingale would have suffered in my place: as it was, I
was so strongly recommended to sell out by his Royal Highness the
Commander-in-Chief, that, being of a good-natured disposition, never
knowing how to refuse a friend, I at once threw up my hopes of military
distinction and retired into civil life.

My lord was kind enough to meet me afterwards in a field in the Glanmire
Road, where he put a ball into my leg. This I returned to him some years
later with about twenty-three others--black ones--when he came to be
balloted for at a club of which I have the honor to be a member.

Thus by the indulgence of a simple and harmless propensity,--of a
propensity which can inflict an injury upon no person or thing except
the coat and the person of him who indulges in it,--of a custom honored
and observed in almost all the nations of the world,--of a custom which,
far from leading a man into any wickedness or dissipation to which
youth is subject, on the contrary, begets only benevolent silence, and
thoughtful good-humored observation--I found at the age of twenty all
my prospects in life destroyed. I cared not for woman in those days:
the calm smoker has a sweet companion in his pipe. I did not drink
immoderately of wine; for though a friend to trifling potations, to
excessively strong drinks tobacco is abhorrent. I never thought of
gambling, for the lover of the pipe has no need of such excitement; but
I was considered a monster of dissipation in my family, and bade fair to
come to ruin.

"Look at George," my mother-in-law said to the genteel and correct young
Flintskinners. "He entered the world with every prospect in life, and
see in what an abyss of degradation his fatal habits have plunged him!
At school he was flogged and disgraced, he was disgraced and rusticat