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Peregrine Pultuney; or, Life in India [by sir J.W. Kaye].
Peregrine Pultuney or Life in India - by sir J.W. Kaye Author:John William Kaye Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Hot Peregrine Pultuney passed at Addiscombe, and what passed there besides. Addiscombe House, as all the world knows, or as all the world ough... more »t to know, was once the seat of Charles Jenkinson, better known as Lord Liverpool, a minister tolerably respectable, as ministers go in civilized Europe. It was in those days celebrated as being not only the residence of a great Man, but as one of the finest specimens of brick work in the United Kingdom—it is now celebrated as a fine specimen of white wash, and as the East India Company's military seminary; or rather as the Government-house of the said institution, for the seminary consists of a strange congregation of regular white-washed buildings, which belong to the composite order of architecture, it being difficult to say whether they most resemble stables, metho- dist chapels, or prisons on a small scale. We must direct the reader's attention to the hall of Government-house, as we have called it; but Addiscombe cadets for distinction's sake call it " theMansion." This hall is of tolerable dimensions, and at the time to which we refer, it was crowded with human beings, and doing duty as a waiting-room. It was early in February, and bitterly cold. There was a fire in the waiting-room it is true, and happy were those who could get near to it; but the unhappy ones were far more numerous, being in the ratio of ten to one. Great coats and cloaks abounded, and old gentlemen looked solemn, and young gentlemen looked nervous, and coachmen and postilions outside looked blue; and altogether there could scarcely have been a more uncomfortable assemblage of people than were gathered together that morning inside and outside of Addiscombc House. It was the morning on which young gentlemen who are candidates for admission ...« less