The fact that I was the nearest of kin got into the newspapers; and in my first drive down St. James's, I had the pleasure of discovering that I had cured a vast number of my friends of their calamitous defect of vision. But if the "post equitem sedet atra cura" was the maxim in the days of Augustus, the man who drives the slower cabriolet in the days of George the Fourth, cannot expect to escape. The "hour too many" overtook me in the first week. On one memorable evening I saw it coming, just as I turned the corner of Piccadilly; fair flight was hopeless, and I took refuge in that snug asylum on the right hand of St. James's Street, which has since expanded into a palace. I stoutly battled the foe, for I "took no note of time" during the next day and night; and when at last I walked forth into the air, I found that I had relieved myself of the burden of three-fourths of my reversion. A weak mind on such an occasion would have cursed the cards, and talked of taking care of the fragment of his property; but mine was of the higher order, and I determined on revenge. I had my revenge, and saw my winners ruined. They had their consolation, and at the close of a six months' campaign saw me walk into the streets a beggar. I grew desperate, and was voted dangerous. I realized the charge by fastening on a noble lord who had been one of the most adroit in pigeoning me. His life was "too valuable to his country," or himself, to allow him to meet a fellow whose life was of no use to any living thing; and through patriotism and the fear of being shot, he kept out of my way. I raged, threatened to post his lordship, and was in the very act of writing out the form of the placard declaring the noble heir of the noble house of ---- a cheat and a scoundrel, when by the twopenny-post I received a notice from the Horse Guards that I was on that day to appear in the Gazette as an ensign in his majesty's ---- regiment, then serving in the Peninsula, with orders to join without delay. This was enough from his lordship, and was certainly better for me than running the chance of damages in the King's Bench, for provoking his majesty's subjects to a breach of the peace.