The reader may recollect that I was formerly a fifer in the grenadier company of the 26th Regiment, and also that there were a great number of the men took the bounty from that corps and went to the Royals. While I was in that company and regiment I had a young man for my comrade, whom I shall call J. F. who was a man of very sober habits, being given to none of those vices for which soldiers are remarkable; nay, he was even so much averse to swearing, that he used to reprove me frequently for making use of what are generally termed minced oaths, to which I was then much addicted, but by means of his repeated friendly and seasonable admonitions, I was at last enabled to leave them off. After we came to India, however, he attached himself to some of those men who had imbibed the libertine principles mentioned above, and with these "evil men and seducers, he waxed worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived." Solomon's question is a pertinent one: "Can a man carry fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burnt? Can a man walk upon hot coals and his feet not be burnt?" Alas, my poor friend soon forgot his own admonitions to me, about my swearing when in Dublin; and when I reminded him of them, he only laughed me to scorn; for the oaths I made use of at that time, when he acted so friendly a part in pointing out to me the evil of the practice, were to him now quite insignificant. Nothing, in regard to swearing, appeared to satisfy him now but the great and dreadful names of Jehovah, and those glorious attributes by which he makes himself known; nor was this all, for he became a mocker at every thing sacred, making himself acquainted with the word of God, for no other reason than as a store-house whence he might amply supply himself with expressions which he could pervert to the purposes of buffoonery, and that he might be able to pour down vollies of raillery upon all those who had even but a small form of godliness[11]. To show you how far his wickedness carried him, I may mention, that at one time he and another of his lewd companions went at night to the hospital where a woman's husband was lying a corpse, and she sitting up with the remains of him who was once loved but now departed, each having a white sheet about him, to make the poor affrighted and rather superstitious female believe, that it was the husband returned from the other world, attended by some of his kindred spirits to pay her a visit, which almost put the poor woman out of her mind. This piece of barbarous conduct was made up, else it would have probably cost them both their serjeants' coats. [11] This puts me in mind of the saying of good Mr. Boston, with regard to people of this description.--"Those who act such a part," says he, "behave as foolishly, but more criminally, than that person who would dig into a mine for metal to melt and pour down his own and his neighbour's throat."