Lippincott's Magazine, page 189 by Various Authors
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a man whom I had known in India as the greatest swell in the ---- Hussars, the smartest cavalry corps in the service, and who, on account of his splendid face and figure, went by the sobriquet of 'the Angel Hussar.'
"Well, it gave me quite a shock. 'Good Heavens, H----!' I said, 'what in the world does this mean?' 'Mean, old fellow? It means that I'd not a farthing in the world, and didn't want to starve. It's all my own cursed folly. I've made my bed, and must lie on it.' I pressed a couple of sovereigns into his hand, and made him promise to call on me next day. He came and gave me the details of his descent, the old story of course--wine and its alliterative concomitant, conjoined with utter recklessness." "Well, and could you help him?" "I'm glad to say I could. I got him the place of stud-groom to a nobleman in the south of Ireland: he's turned over a new leaf, is perfectly steady, and doing as well as possible."
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NOTES.
There is an old story that Augustus, being once asked by a veteran soldier for his aid in a lawsuit, told the petitioner to go to a certain advocate. "Ah," replied the soldier, "it was not by proxy that I served you at Actium!" So struck, continues the tradition, was Augustus with this response, that he personally took charge of the soldier's cause, and gained it for him. Possibly it may be on the theory that his subjects "do not serve him by proxy" when he needs their services that the Austrian kaiser even to this day holds personal audiences with his people regarding their private desires or grievances. Evidently traditional, this custom is so singular as to merit a more general notice than it habitually receives: indeed, its existence might be doubted by the foreign reader, did not a Hungarian journal, Der Osten, furnish a detailed description of it. The only prerequisite to an audience would seem to be the lodging of the subject's name and rank with one of the emperor's secretaries, who thereupon appoints the day and hour for his appearance