Miscellanies (Volume 3); Prose and Verse (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1870. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... English Devil. If any service was to be done I was sure to put upon it. I got frequent gratifications of money, but no promotion; and it was on the day after I had killed the Austrian colonel (a great officer of Uhlans, whom I engaged singly and on foot) that General Biilow, my colonel, gave me two Frederics d'or in front of the regiment, and said, "I reward thee now, but I fear I shall have to hang thee one day or other." I spent the money, and that I had taken from the colonel's body, every groschen, that night with some jovial companions; but aa long as war lasted was never without a dollar in my purse. CHAPTER VII. BABBY LEADS A GABBISON LIEE, AND FINDS MANY TBIENDB IHEBE. After the war, our regiment was garrisoned in the capital, the least dull, perhaps, of all the towns of Prussia; but that does not say much for its gaiety. Our service, which was always severe, still left many hours of the day disengaged, in which we might take our pleasure had we the means of paying for the same. Many of our mess got leave to work in trades, but I had been brought up to none, and besides my honour forbade me, for as a gentleman, I could not soil my fingers by a manual occupation. But our pay was barely enough to keep us from starving, and as I have always been fond of pleasure, and as the position in which we now were, in the midst of the capital, prevented us from resorting to those means of levying contributions which are always pretty feasible in war-time, I was obliged to adopt the only means left me of providing for my expenses, and, in a word, became the Ordonnanz, or confidential military gentleman of my captain. I spurned the office for years previously, when it was made to me in the English service; but the position is very different in a foreign country: besides...