''Be Senectuter 221 



Waterloo, which he visited two years since, on the "Waterloo- 

 day, and had a special dinner of his friends at the inn, 

 where the museum is ; and which he would visit again had 

 he not been crippled for life owing to an accident 

 on the South- Western Railway in getting out of a 

 carriage on his way home from Aldershot, two years since, 

 for which he had the pleasure of paying over £100 in costs 

 in an action which he lost, against the company. That 

 action is a little sore point, though, soldier-like, he says, 

 "If I could have got those d— d lawyers of mine in the 

 wigs out of the way, and told the judge my own story, I 

 should have won." 



Don't make any mistake, the old gentleman is no brag- 

 gart, and very truthful, with a real soldier's heart in him, 

 in his green old age ; and he says, " If I wasn't a cripple I 

 should like to go again now, though it would be my turn to 

 go as officer, I think." He is no laudator temporis acti, but 

 I believe what he says, which is that England was saved 

 by the sheer pluck of every individual who fought those 

 battles, and the campaign, short as it was, was decided, as 

 regards the hand-to-hand work, by English physique and 

 English horses. 



One question I asked him, which was about army flogging. 

 He is dead against it, and says, " If a soldier deserves to be 

 flogged, kick him out and let him starve, and no one will 

 pity him ; if he has the making of a good soldier flogging 

 would ruin him ; if he is a bad one it will make him a 

 thorouijh blackguard." 



When an admirable article appeared in Baihjs Magazine 

 on Owen Swift, one of the London press was good enough 

 to say it was vulgar : a little bird at the asylum whispered 

 to me that the writer was very kind to the dying pugilist in 

 his latter days. I have no doubt but that the Priest and 

 the Levite said the good Samaritan's twopence was a plant 



