"Be Senectuter 217 



strong imaginations paint as a prize-fighter of the past, but 

 then he belongs to the old school, when prize-fighters were 

 supported by the greatest and noblest in the land, and 

 their followers acquired the manners of their associates. 



Turning to legitimate warfare, let us look for a moment 

 at another sample of old English stuff in the shape of an 

 old soldier cetat 88, a hale, hearty, bright-eyed, cheerful old 

 man, from whom now I should be very sorry to receive a 

 cut from the soft end of an oak stick, let alone a sw-ord. 

 Let us imagine that it is a fine Sunday afternoon, and that 

 we are sitting in a comfortable little house in a Surrey upland 

 at Carshalton, near Sutton, and that round the walls of the 

 room hang pictures, and on the tables are books about 

 Napoleon, the Duke, and Waterloo, &c., and that there is a 

 cavalry sword hanging up against the w^all of one room, 

 faced by an old Russian musket opposite. Let us carry our 

 imagination a little further, and that we have refused the 

 ofier of sherry or grog, and that a handy maid has pro- 

 duced some beer after our w^alk. On the table lies a very 

 excellent plan of Waterloo (which I took him over), copied 

 from an official plan which I am fortunate enough to 

 possess, prepared in 1815 by order of the Duke of York, 

 Avhich the writer of this has travelled over again and again 

 and compared with other French and Enghsh plans against 

 the Duke's dispatches, " Gleig's Waterloo," and most known 

 books on the subject, besides having on several occasions, 

 when in Belgium, surveyed the ground itself ; and imagine 

 that, for once in his life, the writer is listening and not 

 talking. 



Room, if you please, for Mr. James Simmonds, formerly 

 of the 7 th Hussars. " In answ^er to your question why I 

 became a soldier, it was thus : My father was a farmer and 

 market gardener, well to do, on Mitcham Common, holding 

 what is now Watney's farm. I was drawn for the Militia 



