her. He had served out to him
on his arrival at his depot a set of obsolete garments which he was
forbidden to wear and was compelled to return to stores, when a new
outfit at his own cost had been supplied to him. My gorge rose at this
bare-faced iniquity, and as a protest against it, I attired myself on
my first Sunday in barracks in the clothes which had been fraudulently
assigned to me, and joined the regiment on church parade. I suppose no
soldier had been so attired since Waterloo, and my appearance was the
signal for a roar of laughter in which men and officers alike joined,
and which was not extinguished until I had been ignominiously hustled
back to quarters. In the Fourth Royal Irish Dragoon Guards at least, I
know myself to have been the last man whom the wicked system attempted
to pillage in that fashion. As a matter of course, I was marked from
that moment.

People who have a practical knowledge of modern Army life tell me that
things have changed altogether for the better since those far bygone
days of 1865; and I am disposed to believe that no such shameless
swindles as were then perpetrated could possibly continue for a week
under existing conditions. A Press which makes us familiar with all
sorts of grievances, and an inquiring Parliamentarian or two, would
provide a short shrift and a long rope for the perpetrator of any such
bare-faced robbery as I suffered under when I first joined the Fourth
Royal Irish Dragoon Guards. The motive of my enlistment had no remotest
connection with the bounty offered. I joined the Army simply out of that
green-sickness of the mind from which so many young men suffer, and
some nebulous notions of heroism in falling against a savage foe in
some place not geographically defined. But in the printed terms of the
agreement which I signed it was promised that I should receive a three
pound bounty and a free kit. As a matter of fact, I received neither one
nor the other. I was served out, as I have stated, with an absolutely
obsolete uniform, which I was forbidden to wear, and my bounty was
impounded to pay for regulation clothing.

This initial struggle made me from the first a personage of mark in the
regiment; for when I was summoned to my first parade, I had
deliberately donned the clothes which had been dealt out to me from the
quartermaster's stores, and presented myself to public view in a uniform
which had probably been seen on no parade ground in England since Her
la