Sketches from Shady Places Author:John Rutherford 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: life are limited therefore to licentious adventure, racy bits of roguery, practised at the cost of recruits and the stock regimental fools, and rollicking specim... more »ens of the way in which he used to get into scrapes and out of them, when brought to book, by playing upon the weaker points in the character of the regimental authorities. To borrow his own phrase, he knew the ' soft side' of every officer in the regiment, and the best way of getting at it. Some were to be cajoled, others to be amused, and a third set to be carried by storm ; so he whined, played the buffoon, or put on the brazen reprobate according to circumstances, and mostly with success. Being a favourite with several officers of the old school, including the colonel, as such men as he generally were in the good old days of the army, he was made a colour-sergeant, and retained the rank for years. Unfortunately for him, as he was on the eve of completing his twenty-one years' service, this colonel exchanged with another, noted for eccentric saintliness. The new colonel was an ultra-temperance man, and the colour-sergeant was just the reverse. In consequence the next serious escapade of the latter was punished by reduction to the ranks. A few months later—four or five years ago—he was discharged with a pension of a shilling a day. Since his discharge the old soldier lives something in this way :—His pension is paid quarterly in London, where he contrives to appear a week or so before pay-day, and mostly as a tramp of the meanest order. Here he hovers between casual wards and low lodging-houses, until he lights upon a person whom he can render useful for a while in a way peculiar to himself—but I had better display the man by giving the story of a year of his life much as he told it himself. ' Twelve months ago '—t...« less