conversation consisted
chiefly of an endless repetition of three or four words, not one of
which I had ever heard before. Carefully treasuring these up, as having
a fine martial smack about them suitable to the military career I then
proposed embracing, I, in all innocence, fired off one of the
trumpeter's full-flavoured expressions at my horror-stricken family
during luncheon, to be at once ordered out of the room, and severely
punished afterwards. We all know that "what the soldier said" is not
legal evidence; in this painful fashion I also learnt that "what the
trumpeter said" is not held to be a valid excuse for the use of bad
language by a small boy.

In the late autumn of 1890 Admiral Sir Edmund Fremantle brought his
flagship, the Boadicea, right up the Hooghly, and moored her alongside
the Maidan. The ship remained there for six weeks, the Admiral taking
up his quarters at Government House. My sister Lady Lansdowne had a
mistaken weakness for midshipmen, whom she most inappropriately termed
"those dear little fellows." At that time midshipmen went to sea at
fifteen years of age, so they were much younger than at present. As
these boys were constantly at Government House, four of us thought that
we would lend the midshipmen our ponies for an early morning ride. The
boys all started off at a gallop, and every one of them was bolted with
as soon as he reached the Maidan. As they had no riding-breeches, their
trousers soon rucked up, exhibiting ample expanses of bare legs; they
had no notion of riding, but managed to stick on somehow by clinging to
pommel and mane, banging here into a sedate Judge of the High Court,
with an apologetic "Sorry, sir, but this swine of a pony won't steer;"
barging there into a pompous Anglo-Indian official, as they yelled to
their ponies, "Easy now, dogs-body, or you'll unship us both;"
galloping as hard as their ponies could lay legs to the ground,
cannoning into half the white inhabitants of Calcutta, but always with
imperturbable good-humour. When their panting ponies tried to pull up
to recover their wind a little, these rising hopes of the British Navy
kicked them with their heels into a gallop again, shouting strange
nautical oaths, and grinning from ear to ear with delight, until
finally four ponies lathered in sweat, in the last stages of
exhaustion, returned to Government House, and four dripping boys
alighted, declaring that they had had the time of their lives in spite
of a