behaviour, heavy drinking, and hard swearing. They could not well be blamed for this. Year in and year out they went through the same routine, were treated like machines—of an inferior kind—and having little prospect of finding decent employment on the expiration of their twenty-one years' engagement, they lived only for the present, the single bright spot in their existence being the receipt of a few shillings—perhaps not more than one—on the weekly pay-day. These rugged veterans exacted full deference from the recruit, who was assigned the worst bed in the room, given the smallest amount of food and the least palatable, had to "lend" them articles of kit which they had lost or sold, "fag" for them in a variety of ways, and, finally, was expected to share with them at the regimental canteen such cash as he might have in the purchase of beer sold at 3d. a quart.
It so happened that I joined the regiment on pay-day, and accordingly the greater number of my newly-found companions spent the evening at the canteen—then a mere drinking saloon—or at public-houses in the town. On return to quarters, if not before, old quarrels were revived or new ones were started, and some of them had to be settled by an appeal to fists. One of these encounters took place on and near the bed in which I was vainly trying to sleep, and which was itself of an unattractive and uncomfortable nature. Argument and turmoil continued far into the night, and I began to wonder whether I had made a wise decision after all. I continued to wonder for several nights afterwards, and would lie awake for hours meditating whether to see the matter through, or get out of bed, put on my plain clothes (which I still had), and "desert." Fortunately for me another occupant of the room removed the temptation these clothes afforded, for, having none of his own, he one night appropriated mine, went off in them, and never came back.
Shortly before the period of which I write it had been the custom for a married soldier and his wife, with such children as they possessed, to live in one corner of the barrack-room, screened off with blankets, and in return for this accommodation and a share of the rations the wife kept
