Charles OMalley, vol 2 | Page 2

what the Galway girls are like: fine, hearty, free-and-easy, talking, laughing devils, but as deep and 'cute as a Master in Chancery; ready for any fun or merriment, but always keeping a sly look-out for a proposal or a tender acknowledgment, which--what between the heat of a ball-room, whiskey negus, white satin shoes, and a quarrel with your guardian--it's ten to one you fall into before you're a week in the same town with them.
"As for the men, I don't admire them so much: pleasant and cheerful enough when they're handicapping the coat off your back, and your new tilbury for a spavined pony and a cotton umbrella, but regular devils if you come to cross them the least in life; nothing but ten paces, three shots apiece, to begin and end with something like Roger de Coverley, when every one has a pull at his neighbor. I'm not saying they're not agreeable, well-informed, and mild in their habits; but they lean overmuch to corduroys and coroners' inquests for one's taste farther south. However, they're a fine people, take them all in all; and if they were not interfered with, and their national customs invaded with road-making, petty-sessions, grand-jury laws, and a stray commission now and then, they are capable of great things, and would astonish the world.
"But as I was saying, we were ordered to Loughrea after being fifteen months in detachments about Birr, Tullamore, Kilbeggan, and all that country; the change was indeed a delightful one, and we soon found ourselves the centre of the most marked and determined civilities. I told you they were wise people in the west; this was their calculation: the line--ours was the Roscommon militia--are here to-day, there to-morrow; they may be flirting in Tralee this week, and fighting on the Tagus the next; not that there was any fighting there in those times, but then there was always Nova Scotia and St. John's, and a hundred other places that a Galway young lady knew nothing about, except that people never came back from them. Now, what good, what use was there in falling in love with them? Mere transitory and passing pleasure that was. But as for us: there we were; if not in Kilkenny we were in Cork. Safe out and come again; no getting away under pretence of foreign service; no excuse for not marrying by any cruel pictures of the colonies, where they make spatch-cocks of the officers' wives and scrape their infant families to death with a small tooth-comb. In a word, my dear O'Mealey, we were at a high premium; and even O'Shaughnessy, with his red head and the legs you see, had his admirers. There now, don't be angry, Dan; the men, at least, were mighty partial to you.
"Loughrea, if it was a pleasant, was a very expensive place. White gloves and car hire,--there wasn't a chaise in the town,--short whist, too (God forgive me if I wrong them, but I wonder were they honest), cost money; and as our popularity rose, our purses fell; till at length, when the one was at the flood, the other was something very like low water.
"Now, the Roscommon was a beautiful corps; no petty jealousies, no little squabbling among the officers, no small spleen between the major's wife and the paymaster's sister,--all was amiable, kind, brotherly, and affectionate. To proceed, I need only mention one fine trait of them,--no man ever refused to indorse a brother officer's bill. To think of asking the amount or even the date would be taken personally; and thus we went on mutually aiding and assisting each other,--the colonel drawing on me, I on the major, the senior captain on the surgeon, and so on, a regular cross-fire of 'promises to pay,' all stamped and regular.
"Not but the system had its inconveniences; for sometimes an obstinate tailor or bootmaker would make a row for his money, and then we'd be obliged to get up a little quarrel between the drawer and the acceptor of the bill; they couldn't speak for some days, and a mutual friend to both would tell the creditor that the slightest imprudence on his part would lead to bloodshed; 'and the Lord help him! if there was a duel, he'd be proved the whole cause of it.' This and twenty other plans were employed; and finally, the matter would be left to arbitration among our brother officers, and I need not say, they behaved like trumps. But notwithstanding all this, we were frequently hard pressed for cash; as the colonel said, 'It's a mighty expensive corps.' Our dress was costly; not that it had much lace and gold on it, but that, what between falling on the road at night, shindies at mess, and other devilment, a coat lasted no