INTRODUCTION. 3 



than seventy-five years, and as, up to the present 

 time, I have never been obliged to wear spectacles, or 

 even clearers, either to read or write, and for 

 which blessing I trust I am sufficiently thankful, I 

 have heard and seen and done many queer things both 

 by land and water, which, in due course and with 

 your kind permission, I shall attempt to describe, if 

 not to edification, I trust it may be for your amuse- 

 ment. The greater number of my cotemporaries who 

 were at Eton with me, and who remember me as a 

 youth upon a pair of young and active legs, my 

 body and carnage as straight as a fishing rod, and 

 the sum total of me as full of mischief as a tree full 

 of monkeys, are, in 1886, but few and far between. 

 Many have gone from this land, I trust, to a better ; 

 at all events, they have passed away from amongst us, 

 and those few who do remain are, for the most part, 

 like myself, I fear, considered old fogies, with their 

 grey hairs, and grandchildren around them, and 

 bearing the indelible stamp of Anno Domini upon 

 their grizzly beards and rounded shoulders. 



4 



Those who were not born in the remote period I 

 have spoken of, I believe, from seeing me, to use a 

 coaching term, with a " wheel up," for I have been 

 lame from an accident for more than sixty years, 



B 2 



