_January 1st, 1801._--Happy New Year and many of them to my dearest mother. Now to ask a favour _not_ to be told to dad unless you think there will be no inconvenience to him. Cameron [a brother officer] has been in a very disagreeable situation for some time about family affairs. Several things have happened to put him to enormous expense, and he intends borrowing money from the Jews, which must do him much mischief in the end, though he will have a very good property when of age. Now if my father has not drawn the £100 of forage money belonging to me which Armitt has had these eight months, to repay the money you advanced, can he spare it for Cameron? You know the Comptroller [his father] as well as I do, and if you showed him the letter at once he would do the thing to oblige me, when perhaps it was troublesome. Cameron has not the least idea of this matter. A very beautiful letter for all concerned--father, mother, son, and friend--and worth many long pages of description. Then he falls in love, is very miserable, goes to London, sees several of his rich relations, finds out he cannot afford fine life, and comes back again to his books and his dreams. The regiment is now at Shorncliffe. The colonel, a type of warrior at that time and for years later peculiar to our service, lived much at Carlton House and seldom saw his soldiers, who, groaning under a well-nigh intolerable discipline, were left to the mercy of the second in command. The picture we get of the result is a curious one. "_Shorncliffe, December, 1802._--We are going on here as badly as need be. Two or three men desert every night, and not recruits either. The hospital is full of rheumatic patients and men with colds and coughs, caught from standing long on damp ground and being kept in mizzling rains for hours without moving."