green
cloth: and if, as it would often happen, his own hands were too feeble
or inflamed to hold the box, he would call the mains, nevertheless,
and have his valet or a friend to throw for him. I like this courageous
spirit in a man; the greatest successes in life have been won by such
indomitable perseverance.

I was by this time one of the best-known characters in Europe; and the
fame of my exploits, my duels, my courage at play, would bring crowds
around me in any public society where I appeared. I could show reams of
scented paper, to prove that this eagerness to make my acquaintance was
not confined to the gentlemen only; but that I hate boasting, and
only talk of myself in so far as it is necessary to relate myself's
adventures: the most singular of any man's in Europe. Well, Sir Charles
Lyndon's first acquaintance with me originated in the right honourable
knight's winning 700 pieces of me at picquet (for which he was almost my
match); and I lost them with much good-humour, and paid them: and paid
them, you may be sure, punctually. Indeed, I will say this for myself,
that losing money at play never in the least put me out of good-humour
with the winner, and that wherever I found a superior, I was always
ready to acknowledge and hail him.

Lyndon was very proud of winning from so celebrated a person, and we
contracted a kind of intimacy; which, however, did not for a while go
beyond pump-room attentions, and conversations over the supper-table at
play: but which gradually increased, until I was admitted into his more
private friendship. He was a very free-spoken man (the gentry of those
days were much prouder than at present), and used to say to me in his
haughty easy way, 'Hang it, Mr. Barry, you have no more manners than a
barber, and I think my black footman has been better educated than you;
but you are a young fellow of originality and pluck, and I like you,
sir, because you seem determined to go to the deuce by a way of your
own.' I would thank him laughingly for this compliment, and say, that
as he was bound to the next world much sooner than I was, I would be
obliged to him to get comfortable quarters arranged there for me. He
used also to be immensely amused with my stories about the splendour of
my family and the magnificence of Castle Brady: he would never tire of
listening or laughing at those histories.

'Stick to the trumps, however, my lad,' he would say, when I told him of
my misfortunes in the