Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2

“It is now some fifteen years since—if it wasn’t for O’Shaughnessy’s wrinkles, I could not believe it five—we were quartered in Loughrea. There were, besides our regiment, the Fiftieth and the Seventy-third, and a troop or two of horse artillery, and the whole town was literally a barrack, and as you may suppose, the pleasantest place imaginable. All the young ladies, and indeed all those that had got their brevet some years before, came flocking into the town, not knowing but the Devil might persuade a raw ensign or so to marry some of them.
“Such dinner parties, such routs and balls, never were heard of west of Athlone. The gayeties were incessant; and if good feeding, plenty of claret, short whist, country dances, and kissing could have done the thing, there wouldn’t have been a bachelor with a red coat for six miles around.
“You know the west, O’Mealey, so I needn’t tell you what the Galway girls are like: fine, hearty, free-and-easy, talking, laughing devils, but as deep and ‘cute as a Master in Chancery; ready for any fun or merriment, but always keeping a sly look-out for a proposal or a tender acknowledgment, which—what between the heat of a ball-room, whiskey negus, white satin shoes, and a quarrel with your guardian—it’s ten to one you fall into before you’re a week in the same town with them.
“As for the men, I don’t admire them so much: pleasant and cheerful enough when they’re handicapping the coat off your back, and your new tilbury for a spavined pony and a cotton umbrella, but regular devils if you come to cross them the least in life; nothing but ten paces, three shots apiece, to begin and end with something like Roger de Coverley, when every one has a pull at his neighbor. I’m not saying they’re not agreeable, well-informed, and mild in their habits; but they lean overmuch to corduroys and coroners’ inquests for one’s taste farther south. However, they’re a fine people, take them all in all; and if they were not interfered with, and their national customs invaded with road-making, petty-sessions, grand-jury laws, and a stray commission now and then, they are capable of great things, and would astonish the world.