I duly received my "kit," which I may here remark absorbed the whole of the "bounty" (at that period amounting to four pounds, eleven shillings, and sixpence), and left me upwards of two pounds in debt; this was deducted from my daily pay of sixteen pence. The rations consisted of three-quarters of a pound daily of boiled meat--soup, potatoes, coffee, and bread--all of good quality; and these only cost eightpence, which, together with the stoppages, left me in the receipt of a daily income of threepence. The obliging corporal of my squad handed me over that sum every morning at breakfast-time. One penny of this I generally invested in a herring, rasher of bacon, or a lump of rancid butter, at the little chandler's shop adjacent to the canteen in the barrack-yard; the other twopence was generally expended in beer, for I had not then learned the expensive habit of smoking. The cleaning materials--such as Bath-brick, soap, pipeclay, chrome-yellow, oil, blacking, etc--we could any time procure on credit from the sergeant-major of the troop, who booked our account and rendered it monthly. For these we paid most extravagant prices; and it was more than _eight months_ before the two pounds, in which I was indebted at commencement, was paid off. I had, however, a new pair of overalls at a guinea, and a pair of Wellington boots at sixteen shillings and eightpence, during the interval. It is not, I believe, generally understood that, in addition to his rations, the soldier has to pay for a good portion of his clothing. The regiment was composed of about equal numbers of Irish and English; and, to give the sons of Erin their due, I found them quite as agreeable and more obliging in their manner to recruits than their Saxon comrades. Strange to say, there was only one Scotchman in the corps, and he volunteered to the 9th, or Queen's Lancers, and embarked with the regiment for India, in the winter of 184--. I soon became reconciled to my new life, and entered on my duty with a determination to excel, if possible, in that most difficult and arduous duty for a cavalry recruit--riding drills, in which I most erroneously imagined I should be all but perfect. I had ridden the cart-horses to water and pasture; had often trotted, and even galloped, my father's old cob "Billy" to the shoeing smith's, and had never yet been thrown. The first introduction, however, to those tormentors of the poor recruit-- the "rough-riders"--soon convinced me that I was most woefully mistaken, as I found that all I had practised at home must be abandoned, indeed forgotten, before I could be properly said to have advanced one step in the military style of equitation.