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INTERVIEW BETWEEN COUNT GALGENSTEIN AND MASTER THOMAS.
BILLINGS, WHEN HE INFORMS THE COUNT OF HIS PARENTAGE.
I don't know in all this miserable world a more miserable spectacle than that of a young fellow of five or six and forty.

The British army, that nursery of valour, turns out many of the young fellows I mean: who, having flaunted in dragoon uniforms from seventeen to six-and-thirty; having bought, sold, or swapped during that period some two hundred horses; having played, say, fifteen thousand games at billiards; having drunk some six thousand bottles of wine; having consumed a reasonable number of Nugee coats, split many dozen pairs of high-heeled Hoby boots, and read the newspaper and the army-list duly, retire from the service when they have attained their eighth lustre, and saunter through the world, trailing from London to Cheltenham, and from Boulogne to Paris, and from Paris to Baden, their idleness, their ill-health, and their ennui.

"In the morning of youth," and when seen along with whole troops of their companions, these flowers look gaudy and brilliant enough; but there is no object more dismal than one of them alone, and in its autumnal, or seedy state.

My friend, Captain Popjoy, is one who has arrived at this condition, and whom everybody knows by his title of Father Pop.