THE ANGEL HUSSAR.
I think some of the best talks I have had in my life have been with chance companions on whom I have happened in the course of a roving life—sometimes in a restaurant, sometimes in the railroad-car or steamboat, and not unfrequently in the smoking-room of a hotel.
If you have ever been in Dublin, you know Dawson street, and in Dawson street the Hibernian Hotel. I am not prepared to endorse all the arrangements of that hostelry, nor indeed of any other in that part of the United Kingdom called Ireland: I have suffered too much in them. Still, I will say that the Hibernian is to be praised for a really comfortable and handsome smoking-room, containing easy-chairs deservedly so called, and a capital collection of standard novels. One raw evening in the spring of 1871 I sauntered in, and found some gentlemanlike-looking fellows there, who proved pleasant company, and presently a remarkably distingué-looking young man, with an unmistakably military cut, came in and sat down near me. We fell to talking. He was quartered at the Curragh, and was up in Dublin en route for the Newmarket spring meeting. He told me that he made some £700 a year by the turf. "I've a cousin, you see, who is a great sporting man, and thus I'm 'in with a stable,' and get put up to tips," he said. "But for this the turf would be a very poor thing to dabble in." And this led to a talk about officers' lives and their money-affairs. "Oh," he said, "you've no notion of the number who go to utter grief. Why now, I'll tell you what happened to me last season in London. I was asked to go down and dine with some fellows at Richmond; and being awfully late, I rushed out of the club and hailed the first hansom I could see with a likely horse in Pall Mall. I scarcely looked at the man, but said, 'Now I want to get down to the Star and Garter by eight: go a good pace and I'll pay you for it.' Well, he had a stunning good horse, and we rattled away at a fine rate; and when I got out I was putting the money into his hand, when he said, 'Don't you know me, B——?' I looked up in amazement, and in another moment recognized a man whom I had known in India as the greatest swell in the —— Hussars, the smartest cavalry corps in the service, and who, on account of his splendid face and figure, went by the sobriquet of 'the Angel Hussar.'
"Well, it gave me quite a shock. 'Good Heavens, H——!' I said, 'what in the world does this mean?' 'Mean, old fellow? It means that I'd not a farthing in the world, and didn't want to starve. It's all my own cursed folly. I've made my bed, and must lie on it.' I pressed a couple of sovereigns into his hand, and made him promise to call on me next day. He came and gave me the details of his descent, the old story of course—wine and its alliterative concomitant, conjoined with utter recklessness." "Well, and could you help him?" "I'm glad to say I could. I got him the place of stud-groom to a nobleman in the south of Ireland: he's turned over a new leaf, is perfectly steady, and doing as well as possible."