rdinary. These gentlemen I treated to the best wines that the
house afforded, for I was determined to keep up the character of the
English gentleman, and I talked to them about my English estates with a
fluency that almost made me believe in the stories which I invented. I
was even asked to an assembly at Wilhelmshohe, the Elector's palace, and
danced a minuet there with the Hofmarshal's lovely daughter, and lost a
few pieces to his excellency the first huntmaster of his Highness.

At our table at the inn there was a Prussian officer who treated me with
great civility, and asked me a thousand questions about England; which
I answered as best I might. But this best, I am bound to say, was bad
enough. I knew nothing about England, and the Court, and the noble
families there; but, led away by the vaingloriousness of youth (and a
propensity which I possessed in my early days, but of which I have long
since corrected myself, to boast and talk in a manner not altogether
consonant with truth), I invented a thousand stories which I told him;
described the King and the Ministers to him, said the British Ambassador
at Berlin was my uncle, and promised my acquaintance a letter of
recommendation to him. When the officer asked me my uncle's name, I was
not able to give him the real name, and so said his name was O'Grady: it
is as good a name as any other, and those of Kilballyowen, county
Cork, are as good a family as any in the world, as I have heard. As for
stories about my regiment, of these, of course, I had no lack. I wish my
other histories had been equally authentic.

On the morning I left Cassel, my Prussian friend came to me with an open
smiling countenance, and said he, too, was bound for Dusseldorf, whither
I said my route lay; and so laying our horses' heads together we jogged
on. The country was desolate beyond description. The prince in whose
dominions we were was known to be the most ruthless seller of men in
Germany. He would sell to any bidder, and during the five years which
the war (afterwards called the Seven Years' War) had now lasted, had
so exhausted the males of his principality, that the fields remained
untilled: even the children of twelve years old were driven off to the
war, and I saw herds of these wretches marching forwards, attended by
a few troopers, now under the guidance of a red-coated Hanovarian
sergeant, now with a Prussian sub-officer accompanying them; with some
of whom my companion exchanged s