. It was during the
good times of Ismail Pacha. This made me a little suspicious that my
salary might run on so fast that I should not be able to catch it.

The other post offered me was that of London correspondent to an
important Parisian newspaper.

* * * * *

I had had enough of military "glory" by this time. Yet the prospect of
an adventurous life is always more or less fascinating at twenty-three
years of age.

Being the only child of a good widowed mother, I thought I would take
her valuable advice on the subject.

I am fortunate in having a mother full of common sense. With her French
provincial ideas, she was rather startled to hear that a disabled
lieutenant could all at once become an active colonel. She thought that
somehow the promotion was too rapid.

Alas! she, too, had had enough of military "glory."

Her advice was to be followed, for it was formulated thus: "You speak
English pretty well; we have a good many friends in England; accept the
humbler offer, and go to England to earn an honest living."

This is how I was not with Arabi Pacha on the wrong side at
Tel-el-Kebir, and how it became my lot to make one day the acquaintance
of the British school-boy of whom I shall have more to say by-and-by.

* * * * *

On the 8th of July, 1872, I took the London train at the _Gare du
Nord_, Paris.

Many relations and friends came to the station to see me off. Some had
been in England, some had read books on England, but all seemed to know
a great deal about it. Advice, cautions, suggestions, were poured into
my ears.

"Be sure you go and see Madame Tussaud's to-morrow," said one.

"Now," said another, "when you get to Charing Cross, don't fail to try
and catch hold of a fellow-passenger's coat, and hold fast till you get
to your hotel. The fog is so thick in the evening that the lamp-lights
are of no use, you know."

All information is valuable when you start for a foreign country. But I
could not listen to more. Time was up.

I shook hands with my friends and kissed my relations, including an
uncle and two cousins of the sterner sex. This will sound strange to
English or American ears. Well, it sounds just as strange to mine, now.

I do not know that a long residence in England has greatly improved me
(though my English friends say it has), but what I do know is, that I
could not now kiss a man, even if he were