From General Crawfurd I more than once obtained most kind mention in his despatches, and felt that I was not unknown or unnoticed by Sir Arthur Wellesley himself.

At that time these testimonies, slight and passing as they were, contributed to the pride and glory of my existence; and even now--shall I confess it ?--when some gray hairs are mingling with the brown, and when my old dragoon swagger is taming down into a kind of half-pay shamble, I feel my heart warm at the recollection of them.
Be it so; I care not who smiles at the avowal.

I know of little better worth remembering as we grow old than what pleased us while we were young.
With the memory of the kind words once spoken come back the still kinder looks of those who spoke them, and better than all, that early feeling of budding manhood, when there was neither fear nor distrust.

Alas! these are the things, and not weak eyes and tottering limbs, which form the burden of old age.

Oh, if we could only go on believing, go on trusting, go on hoping to the last, who would shed tears for the bygone feats of his youthful days, when the spirit that evoked them lived young and vivid as before?
But to my story.