An officer in Diedenhofen where we occasionally sang while I was with the Metz opera, used to send me gorgeous flowers. He had a way of sitting near the stage and applauding by flapping his handkerchief against the palm of his white kid glove, which so enraged me that I never acknowledged the flowers. One night, an ugly old contralto took my part, as I was laid up, and that was the night the officer had selected to present me with a huge basket of white azaleas and blue satin ribbon. The old dame rewarded the house in general with a false-teeth smile on receiving them over the footlights, which must have discouraged my admirer as the flowers stopped abruptly. We quite often saw young officers very drunk on the streets in Metz, at about five in the afternoon. Asking F---- about this, we were told that it was only the young ones, if we would notice, and that they were obliged to empty their glasses, when toasted by superior officers at regimental dinners. If these gentlemen caught their eyes, as they raised their glasses, many times during the two o'clock dinner, the silly young fellows' heads naturally grew befuddled, but it was not etiquette to refuse to empty their glass. This custom was very hard on a _Faehnrich_ or Ensign, and was later done away with. The smartest officers had English dogcarts, and were certainly most dashing. Many clever ones in the cavalry made money out of horses, buying and selling them amongst themselves. In Darmstadt they introduced the English hunt, and wore the pink. We used to go up to Frankfort for the "gentlemen races," and often saw our own Northern cousins, whose names we knew, but whom we never had the opportunity of meeting, riding with great skill and daring. These races were much encouraged by the Kaiser, and sometimes giant Eitel-Fritz would come and look on, or the dandy Prince Schaumberg-Lippe would make his horse mince round the ring. He was a great beau and ladies' favourite and the horrible accident that has deprived him of his beauty in the battlefield, seems an impossible thing to have happened to just him. Our friend F---- was known in his regiment as "Revolver mouth." This title he earned through his witty tongue and his habit of hitting the bull's-eye in his table conversation. His great friend, a smart young _nouveau riche_, in the most exclusive cavalry regiment, who had much more money than brains, was the butt of much goodnatured chaff from F----. One evening F---- recounted to a group of brother officers how S----, who was notorious for his absent-mindedness and poor memory, was seen miles away from home, galloping down a dusty road. F---- hailed him and said, "But where's your horse?" "That's true," said S---- looking down in utter astonishment, "I must have forgotten to get on him."