BOHEMIANS.

Press, Volume VIII, Issue 840, 10 July 1865, Page 3

BOHEMIANS.

Captain Flyblow had been for many years in the army, but had sold his commission, spent the money, quarrelled with his relations, and was now living on six pounds a week, allowed him by his mother, who declined to see him, but would not let him starve. It is characteristic of the incorrigible nature of some men, that month after month Flyblow squandered this* pittance in a few days' revelry, with the most perfect consciousness of the suffering which his folly would entail. Tet he had experienced every annoyance that imprudence can bring upon the eons of men. He had been chased by bailiffs, till, like the stag at bay, he had betaken himself to the water, and had passed weeks .in fhe Thames steamers — breakfasting meagrely in the Bridegroom—dining sadly on a "polony," and a penny roll in the Wedding Bing— landing cautiously after dusk at Essex Pier, from the Summer Queen. At the time of which I am speaking, he was at that stage when no old creditor thought him worth powder and shot, and he enjoyed free range over the desolate heath of poverty, His great resource towards the end of the month was a humble hostelry named the " Dog and Duck." Here the " capting," as he was called, often enjoyed a temporary bed-room, which was reached by a ladder. Here, if a more prosperous friend invited him to dinner, he would jauntily declare " You'll excuse mc if I'm rather punctual." Here, too, Worbois, the landlord, would sometimes ask him to the family joint on Sunday—for which I fear he would yet charge him eighteenpence when the time came for cashing the little monthly cheque. On such Sundays the " capting " would take in Mrs. W. on his arm from the bar—the corpulent good woman delighting in the ceremonies of polite life ; and his military title seemed to throw a halo over the boiled pork and peasepudding. Finally, indeed, I believe that title brought him as I wife a tradesman's widow with a little money, under whose care he ended his life peacefully, dying of dropsy on his hearth rug, with a pipe in his mouth. "While talking at the door of the Portree Inn with the landlord, who had known my, old friend, I saw approach a broken, bloated figure in a pilot coat —a strange wreck of an English gentlemen to have washed up on* that stormy coast. " Who is that ?" I asked, as he moved away. " That, sir,' r the landlord said, smacking his lips over the name, " that is the Honorable Alfred Monthermer, third son of the Earl of Daneville—a commander in the navy! The curious interest and wonder I had felt about the figure were explained, and my thoughts flew back just twenty-one years. " What, the little pale youngster, with an eyeglass, of the Boanerges, that lay near us in Plymouth Sound?" Picnics to the Breakwater ; evening parties where we judiciously danced with the captain's daughters; cigars on the sly, when out of the reach of oldsters indifferent to the vice, but liking to lick you for committing it—all floated : through the. mind as I gazed after ■the figure of the man, broken, beaten, bedevilled, and forsaken at the age of thirty-five! Then I formed a little theory of the history. The accident of a fast messmate or two to develop the latent tendency "to a mucker;" the fetal kick at Malta, and the presents of filagree and other work to a young Sicilian there; brandy-and-water to relieve the languor of the sirocco, claret and soda to temper the rays of the Dogstar; allowance outrun, and money borrowed from the landlord of "the Jervis* Head, at Portsmouth—a spell in the West Indies inflaming the growing- thirst—and then " Monthermer drinks." He forgets to report Galita Light to one skipper, and another comes up at two bells in the middle watch, and finds him asleep in the hammock netting. He goes from ship to ship—with no open scandal, but pursued by a mysterious blight. There is a snug court of inquiry, and he is invalided soon after. High-born aunts of an evangelical turn get wind of the state of things, and die, leaving him nothing. The elder brother isglad of an excuse for buttoning up his pockets; but at last there is no ship to be got for Alfred, and he is packed off to the Highlands, to be cured of drunkenness in the land of whisky. There are establishments dotted over the western counties where •they profess to do that kind of thing ; out bless you ! the patients get mysteriously drunk for all that—the whisky seems to be in the air. And, after a few yean of deepening, degradation,

- young Hopeful now becomes young I Hopeless —dies. The family solicitor ' sees a good opportunity of giving a : holiday to one of the senior clerks, who > runs down and buries our friend, and !is very glad of the trip. There, my i brisk young gentlemen of the Rag, > making the hay of pleasure in the Haymarket, while the sun shines—how do you like the programme ? The grave is open before us, and the polite moralist bows, and says, " After you !"— " Cornhill Magazine."