year?  Certainly not.  My tailor's bill alone
would absorb more than a third of that sum, and
for "sundries," pocket money, and dinner, I
required, without any undue extravagance, at
least a pound a day.  It was very clear,
therefore, that, after the fashion which men of the
world call life, my existence would be nought
but utter misery unless I could spend at least five
hundred a year. The problem to solve, therefore,
was, how could my income be increased from one
hundred and fifty to five hundred per annum?

I belong to that numerous class of English
gentlemen, who, not being brought up to any
particular calling or profession, can do little or
nothing towards earning even dry bread, far less
bread and cheese.  It is true, I had been for
some ten years in the army; but soldiering
cannot be called a trade, or, if it be one, I certainly
had not so learned the trade as to make it of
any use to me in after life. To me—as to
hundreds of young men—the service had been but
a gentlemanly way of passing my time. The
rudiments of drill I knew as well as most men; I
could command my company on parade without
making mistakes, even when the said company
was acting as skirmishers at an Aldershott
review, under the eyes of old Pennefather.  The
details about paying, clothing, feeding, and lodging
the men, I left to my colour sergeant; still, I
was sufficiently acquainted with the rules and
regulations of the army, to be able to check him
when anything went wrong.  In short, I was a
fair average regimental officer of the post-
Crimean school.

It might have been possible for me to get a
county police appointment, but it would have
greatly interfered with my schemes of future
enjoyment.

"Why not turn speculator?" said my friend
Vernon of the Guards, one night in the smoking-
room of his club, after I had been his guest at
dinner in that comfortable establishment, and
had propounded my difficulties to him: "Why
not become one of your regular City fellows, and
turn speculator?  They have always lots of
money, and don't seem to work very hard for it.
Their chief business—I know two or three of
them—seems to be to go into the city every
day at about eleven o'clock with an umbrella,
and walk back at about four.  It is not very
hard work, and I am sure you would make
money, as well as have plenty of time to enjoy
yourself when you get back to the West-end."

"Why not turn speculator?" He might
as well have asked me why not turn cardinal, or
Baptist preacher, or surgical lecturer. To have
plenty of money I was by no means loth to walk in
the City every day with an umbrella, and remain
there from eleven to four.  But what to do when
I got there—how or where to find the money, or
in what way was I to make it?  It was not
possible—so I reasoned with myself—that there
could be, somewhere east of Temple-bar, a
society or an individual that paid gentlemanly-
looking men a certain large weekly salary for
walking into the City every day with
umbrellas under their arms. Still, in some
respects, now that I thought of it, Vernon was
right. I myself knew several individuals who
had not been brought up to business, but who
had now turned "speculators," or "City
fellows;" who had no offices of their own; who
walked every day to the east with umbrellas
under their arms; and who seemed to make a
handsome living, or at least enough to keep
themselves handsomely. The difficulty with
me was, where to begin to learn, or how to find
out, the real nature of the business or work
performed by a "City fellow."

Belonging to our club—the Army and Navy,
otherwise the "Rag" before mentioned—there
was a gentleman who, although he was always
called "Captain" by the waiters, had certainly no
claim to that title, seeing that he had been only
twelve months in the army, and that it was more
than twenty years since he had sold out as a
cornet. Smithson—that was his name—had,
when a boy at school, conceived the idea that
he would like to be a soldier, and had tormented
every one belonging to, or connected with, his
family, until he got his name put down for a
commission. In those days candidates for the
army had no examination to pass before
entering the service, or I fear Smithson would
have had a poor chance of ever wearing a red
coat. As it was, he obtained what he wanted,
but not until he was upwards of twenty years
old, at which age he was gazetted to a heavy
dragoon regiment.  Coming up to London with
his father, getting himself measured for scarlet
coats—the heavies of those anti-tunic days wore
tail-coats—fitted with helmet, "let in" with
chargers, buckled with sword, put into overalls;
hampered with regulation spurs, and made the
general victim of outfitters, tailors, military
accoutrement-makers, and horse-dealers, was pretty
good fun, and Smithson liked it well enough. Even
when he went down to join his corps at
Birmingham, and found himself master of a
barrack-room neatly furnished by his outfitter,
with a tall heavy dragoon servant, who called him
"sir" every moment, wore his shirts, drank his
private store of brandy, and smoked his cigars,
Smithson was far from being unhappy. To
dine at mess, and be able to call for wine,
luncheon, or anything else he wanted (or
thought he wanted), was an immense
pleasure to this young "plunger;" likewise to put
on his undress uniform, and ride or walk
through the streets, "showing off."  But soon
there came a change. The rules and
regulations of the service required that Smithson
should go through the ordinary course of riding-
school drill, and he was ordered to put
himself under the directions of the
riding-master: a crabbed old officer, who had risen from
the ranks, who never dined at mess, who had
nine children, small pay, and a wife who was the
dread of the regimental sergeant-major himself.

To riding-school, then, Smithson had to go,
and to commence his torments was ordered to
mount, walk, and trot his horse with "stirrups
up"—that is, to bump round the school without
stirrups.  A day of this exercise—an hour