If I have not here selected that portion of my life which most abounded
in striking events and incidents most worthy of recording, my excuse is
simply, because being my first appearance upon the boards, I preferred
accustoming myself to the look of the house, while performing the "Cock,"
to coming before the audience in the more difficult part of Hamlet.

As there are unhappily impracticable people in the world, who, as Curran
expressed it, are never content to know "who killed the gauger, if you
can't inform them who wore his corduroys"--to all such I would, in deep
humility, say, that with my "Confessions" they have nothing to do--I have
neither story nor moral--my only pretension to the one, is the detail of
a passion which marked some years of my life; my only attempt at the
other, the effort to show how prolific in hair-breadth 'scapes may a
man's career become, who, with a warm imagination and easy temper,
believes too much, and rarely can feign a part without forgetting that he
is acting. Having said thus much, I must once more bespeak the
indulgence never withheld from a true penitent, and at once begin my
"Confessions."




CHAPTER I.

ARRIVAL IN CORK--CIVIC FESTIVITIES--PRIVATE THEATRICALS.

It was on a splendid morning in the autumn of the year 181_ that the
Howard transport, with four hundred of his Majesty's 4_th Regt., dropped
anchor in the beautiful harbour of Cove; the sea shone under the purple