A WORD OF INTRODUCTION.

“Story!  God bless you; I have none to tell, sir.”

It is now many—­do not ask me to say how many—­years since I received from the Horse Guards the welcome intelligence that I was gazetted to an insigncy in his Majesty’s __th Foot, and that my name, which had figured so long in the “Duke’s” list, with the words “a very hard case” appended, should at length appear in the monthly record of promotions and appointments.

Since then my life has been passed in all the vicissitudes of war and peace.  The camp and the bivouac—­the reckless gaiety of the mess-table —­the comfortless solitude of a French prison—­the exciting turmoils of active service—­the wearisome monotony of garrison duty, I have alike partaken of, and experienced.  A career of this kind, with a temperament ever ready to go with the humour of those about him will always be sure of its meed of adventure.  Such has mine been; and with no greater pretension than to chronicle a few of the scenes in which I have borne a part, and revive the memory of the other actors in them—­some, alas!  Now no more—­I have ventured upon these “Confessions.”

If I have not here selected that portion of my life which most abounded in striking events and incidents most worthy of recording, my excuse is simply, because being my first appearance upon the boards, I preferred accustoming myself to the look of the house, while performing the “Cock,” to coming before the audience in the more difficult part of Hamlet.

As there are unhappily impracticable people in the world, who, as Curran expressed it, are never content to know “who killed the gauger, if you can’t inform them who wore his corduroys”—­to all such I would, in deep humility, say, that with my “Confessions” they have nothing to do—­I have neither story nor moral—­my only pretension to the one, is the detail of a passion which marked some years of my life; my only attempt at the other, the effort to show how prolific in hair-breadth ’scapes may a man’s career become, who, with a warm imagination and easy temper, believes too much, and rarely can feign a part without forgetting that he is acting.  Having said thus much, I must once more bespeak the indulgence never withheld from a true penitent, and at once begin my “Confessions.”

CHAPTER I.

ARRIVAL IN CORK—­CIVIC FESTIVITIES—­PRIVATE THEATRICALS.

It was on a splendid morning in the autumn of the year 181_ that the Howard transport, with four hundred of his Majesty’s 4_th Regt., dropped anchor in the beautiful harbour of Cove; the sea shone under the purple light of the rising sun with a rich rosy hue, beautifully in contrast with the different tints of the foliage of the deep woods already tinged with the brown of autumn.  Spike Island lay “sleeping upon its broad shadow,” and the large ensign