Jack Hinton: The Guardsman

We dined at the club-house, and sat chatting over our wine till near ten o'clock. The events of the morning were our principal topics; for although I longed myself to turn the c...

My cell, for such it was, although dignified with the appellation of chamber, looked out by a small window upon a narrow street, the opposite side to which was formed by the wal...

There is no epidemic more catching than excitement. The fussy manner and feverish bustle of the people about you are sure, after a time, to communicate themselves to you--the ve...

As we issued from the glen the country became more open; patches of cultivation presented themselves, and an air of comfort and condition superior to what we had hitherto seen w...

There are few persons so unreflective as not to give way to a little self-examination on waking for the first time in a strange place. The very objects about are so many appeals...

A ball, like a battle, has its critical moment: that one short and subtle point, on which its trembling fate would seem to hesitate, ere it incline to this side or that. In both...

Until the moment when I reached the room and threw myself into a chair, my course respecting Lord Dudley de Vere seemed to present not a single difficulty. The appeal so unconsc...

I did not awake till past noon the next day, and had only completed my dressing when Major Mahon made his appearance. Having pronounced my costume accurate, and suggested that i...

On the whole, the journey was to me a delightful one, and certainly not the least pleasant portion of my life in Ireland. Endowed--partly from his individual gifts, partly from...

With the innate courtesy of his country, my humble companion endeavoured to lighten the road by song and story. There was not a blackened gable, not a ruined tower, not even a w...

I was not sorry when I heard the following morning that my mother would not appear before dinner-hour. I dreaded the chance of any allusion to Miss Bellow's name requiring expla...

If the strange medley of every nation and costume which we beheld on entering Paris surprised us, how much greater was our astonishment when, having finished a hurried breakfast...

Fast as had been the pace in the Major's tax-cart, it seemed to me as though the miles flew much more quickly by as I returned to the town. How, indeed, they passed I cannot wel...

As the day of Mr. Rooney's grand entertainment drew near, our disappointment increased tenfold at our inability to be present. The only topic discussed in Dublin was the number...

How I escaped from that room, and by what means I found myself in the street, I know not. My first impulse was to tear off my cravat, that I might breathe more freely; still a s...

When I next came to my senses, I found myself lying upon a sofa in a large room, of which I appeared the only occupant. A confused and misty recollection of my accident, some sc...

I have more than once heard physicians remark the singular immunity a fool's skull seems to possess from the evil effects of injury--as if Nature, when denying a governing facul...

How shall I trace this, the happiest period of my life, when days and weeks rolled on and left no trace behind, save in that delicious calm that stole over my senses gradually a...

My journey had so far fatigued me that I wasn't sorry to have a day of rest; and as Father Tom spent the greater part of it from home, I was left to myself and my own reflection...

'The way of it was this. There was a little estate of mine in the county of Waterford that I used now and then to visit in the shooting season. In fact, except for that, there w...

In a few weeks after the events I have mentioned, the duke left Ireland to resume his parliamentary duties in the House of Lords, where some measure of considerable importance w...

I made many ineffectual efforts to awake on the morning after my adventure. Fatigue and exhaustion, which seem always heaviest when incurred by danger, had completely worn me ou...

I have mentioned in my last chapter how very rapidly I forgot my troubles in the excitement of the scene around me. Indeed, they must have been much more important, much deeper...

Little does he know who voyages in a canal-boat, dragged along some three miles and a half per hour, ignominiously at the tails of two ambling hackneys, what pride, pomp, and ci...

The morning after the receipt of the letter, the contents of which I have in part made known to the reader, O'Grady called on me to accompany him into the city.

I cannot proceed further in this my veracious history without dwelling a little longer upon the characters of the two interesting individuals I have already presented to my read...

'Come, Jack,' he cried, 'this is the third time I have been here to-day. I can't have mercy on you any longer; so rub your eyes, and try if you can't wake sufficiently to listen...

If I began my career as a soldier at one of the gloomiest periods of our Peninsular struggle, I certainly was soon destined to witness one of the most brilliant achievements of...

My first care on reaching my quarters was to make preparations for my departure by the packet of the same evening; my next was to sit down and read over my letters. As I turned...

excitement, I perceived in what a mesh of difficulties I had involved myself, and how a momentary flush of passionate indignation had carried me away beyond the bounds of reason...

I will not say that my reverse of fortune did not depress me; indeed, the first blow fell heavily; but that once past, a number of opposing motives rallied my courage and nerved...

In obedience to O'Grady's directions, of which, fortunately for me, he left a memorandum in writing, I started from Portobello in the canal-boat on the afternoon of the day afte...

I have already recorded the first twenty-four hours of my life in Ireland; and, if there was enough in them to satisfy me that the country was unlike in many respects that which...

When morning broke, I started up and opened the window. It was one of those bright and beauteous daybreaks which would seem to be the compensation a northern climate possesses f...

Joe was right; the mill was not at work, for 'Andy' had been summoned to Ennis, where the assizes were then going forward. The mare which had formed part of our calculations was...

If my kind reader is not already tired of the mountain-road and the wild west, may I ask him--dare I say her?--to accompany me a little farther, while I present another picture...

It was about eight or ten days after the events I have mentioned, when Father Tom Loftus, whose care and attention to me had been unceasing throughout, came in to inform me that...

The package of letters was a large one, of all sizes. From all quarters they came--some from home; some from my brother officers of the Guards; some from the Castle; and even on...

A few nights after the conversation I have briefly alluded to, and pretty much about the same hour, I aroused myself from the depression of nearly thirty hours' sea-sickness, on...

It was late when I arrived in London and drove up to my father's house. The circumstances under which I had left Ireland weighed more heavily on me as I drew near home, and as I...

Feigning illness to O'Grady as the reason of my not going to the Rooneys, I kept my quarters for several days, during which time it required all my resolution to enable me to ke...

'What!' cried I, as I awoke the next morning, and looked with amazement at the figure which waddled across the room with a hoot in either hand--'what! not Corny Delany, surely?'

From what I have already stated, it may be inferred that my acquaintance with the Rooneys was begun under favourable auspices. Indeed, from the evening of the ball the house was...

The candles were burning brightly, and the cheerful bog-fire was blazing on the hearth, as I drew near the window of the priest's cottage; but yet there was no one in the room....

I awoke refreshed after half-an-hour's doze, and then every circumstance of the whole day was clear and palpable before me. I remembered each minute particular, and could bring...

What a contrast to the scene without the walls did the city of Vittoria present! Scarcely had we left behind us the measured tread of moving battalions, the dark columns of wind...

My old friend, save in the deeper brown upon his cheek and some scars from French sabres, was nothing altered from the hour in which we parted; the same bold, generous temperame...

Winding along the quays, we crossed an old and dilapidated bridge; and after traversing some narrow and ruinous-looking streets, we entered the Park, and at length reached the F...

Few men have gone through life without passing through certain periods which, although not marked by positive misfortune, were yet so impressed by gloom and despondence that the...

Should my reader feel any interest concerning that portion of my history which immediately followed the events of my last chapter, I believe I must refer him to Mrs. Doolan, the...

When I had dressed, I found that I had above an hour to spare before dinner; so taking my hat I strolled out into the town. The streets were even more crowded now than before. T...

It was on a dark and starless night in February, 181--, as the last carriage of a dinner-party had driven from the door of a large house in St. James's-square, when a party drew...

The Major's quarters were fixed in one of the best houses in the town, in the comfortable back-parlour of which was now displayed a little table laid for three persons. A devill...

I am by no means certain that the prejudices of my English education were sufficiently overcome to prevent my feeling a kind of tingling shame as I took my place beside Father T...

We were both suddenly awakened from a sound sleep in the _calèche_ by the loud cracking of the postillion's whip, the sounds of street noises, and the increased rattle of the wh...

From motives of delicacy towards Miss Bellew I did not call that day at the Rooneys. For many months such an omission on my part had never occurred. Accordingly, when O'Grady re...

At nine o'clock the jury retired, and a little afterwards the front drawing-room of the Head Inn was becoming every moment more crowded, as the door opened to admit the several...

Such, with little variety, was the history of each day and night of our march--the days usually passed in some place of security and concealment, while a reconnaissance would be...

Mr. Paul Rooney's secret was destined to be inviolable as regarded his leg of pork; for Madame de Roni, either from chagrin or fatigue, did not leave her room the entire day. Mi...

It would be even more wearisome to my reader than the fact was worrying to myself, were I to recount the steps by which my father communicated to Lady Charlotte the intended mar...

I have already passingly alluded to Joe's conversational powers; and certainly they were exercised on this occasion with a more than common ability. Either taking my silence as...

We never experience to the full how far sorrow has made its inroad upon us until we come back, after absence, to the places where we have once been happy, and find them lone and...

I was not quite satisfied with the good priest for his having cut me, no matter what his reasons. I was not overmuch pleased with the tone of the whole meeting itself, and certa...