ANECDOTES OF A BRITISH VETERAN.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1179, 19 October 1882, Page 2

ANECDOTES OF A BRITISH VETERAN.

Time, indeed, seeuis to have wings, when blithe Balcarres Kamsay is found writing that he began his military career some forty years ago. It. seems only the other day that he was quite a young captain in the 75th Regiment, and yet that must be over thirty years since. In 1845, at a little dinner which the author gave ar the Coventry Club, now the St. Jame’s he invited Prince Soltykoff to meet the French Pretender. The next day the Eliasian magnate expressed surprise at the curiosity which Priuce Louis had expressed about the strength and constituents of the Muscovite army, and when Colonel Ramsay met Prince Soltykoff after the Crimean War, the two agreed that this questioning had a very practical purpose. Three years later, when Prince Louis was some what under a cloud, owing to his abortive attempt at Boulogne—the “ Rag” was the only club that opened its doors to him—young Ramsay was much thrown into his company. “(>ften,” he writes, “I sat late into night with him quite alone; when, after showing me relics of his mother, Queen Hortense, he sat playing with a dog which had been his companion in prison nt Ham, or looking dreamily into the fire-plnce, seldom speaking, but every now and then soliloquising and talking of what he would do when he was Emperor of the French.” Some of the most interesting and amusing experiences recorded in these volumes are those which happened to the author when a mere lad, travelling about the Continent in charge of a tutor It was at the Villa Salviata, then belonging to Mr Vanstittarf, but which afterward came into the possession of Grisi, that the young scapegrace had an adventure with the great Catalina. Prince Poniatowski having begged the famous cantatrice to favor tho company with a song, she got up from her seat and moved towards the piano. But before reaching it she changed her mind, and returned to her seat without looking behind her. “ In my anxiety to hear the great singer," said the Colonel, “ I deposited an ice cream, red and rosy, on her chair, which I had not time to remove before she plumped down upon it. The weather being very warm, and the fair prima donna's garments of the thinnest texture, the sensation was evidently a vivid one. She jumped up, exclaiming, ‘ What is this ?' and then saw her white muslin dress dyed red. I was standing by, with my mouth wide open, petrified with terror, when the fair songtress opened upon me such a volley of choice Tuscan vernacular that I fairly fled. Jumping out of a low window I escaped, and never stopped until 1 found myself within the walls at Porto San Gallo." Whilst stopping at Treves, the lad ant next a Prussian general of cavalry, 1

who related to him how that George IV. once gave a dinner to all the Prussian officers at Hanover, and made them all drunk with the exception of the narrator himself. So pleased was the “ first gentleman in Europe,” with the Bacchanalian prowess of the one exception, that, he presented him with a carriage as a token of his royal appreciation.—“ London Globe.”