14 CONFESSIONS OF A HOESE DEALEE. 



" Will you premise me to keep away from that Red 

 Lion Inn?" 



"Yes, yes; anything for a quiet life," says poor 

 Muddlehead. 



The soda-water is swallowed, and there is a temporary 

 lull in the domestic storm. 



I remember a lot of horses being cast from the 8th 

 Hussars. They were sold by auction at a repository in 

 the town where the regiment was then stationed. One 

 of these had a rat-tail, a pair of capped hocks, and a 

 brace of jack spavins *, but his greatest curse was his rat* 

 tail, and for this poor old Jocko was despised by every 

 man in the regiment. He also had the misfortune to be a 

 black colour, and required a deal of extra grooming. 

 Yet Jocko was nobody's horse in particular. He was 

 groomed in turns, and ridden for punishment as a sort of 

 pride-humbler for those who committed any petty faults, 

 or who, for the time being, happened to be out of favour 

 with the troop sergeant. When the trumpet sounded 

 " Stand to your horses," the smart lace-bedizened hussar 

 whose misfortune it happened to be to ride old Jocko a 

 day's march, would twirl the ends of his moustache, and, 

 rolling his eye fiercely at the bare stump sticking out of 



Jocko's croup, he would say, "D n that beastly 



tail !" 



The writer will confess that it has been his lot more 

 than once to ride old Jocko on the line of march* Once 

 in particular, he remembers, when changing quarters 

 from Manchester to Hounslow, he incurred the displea- 1 



