'Musha, but it's sorry I am,' says my father, 'to see you this way; for ye must be bad entirely to leave off in the beginning of the evening.' And thrue for him, the captain was dead in the morning.
"A sorrowful day it was for my father when he died.

It was the finest place in the world; little to do, plenty of divarsion, and a kind man he was,--when he was drunk.

Well, then, when the captain was buried and all was over, my father hoped they'd be for letting him away, as he said, 'Sure, I'm no use in life to anybody, save the man that's gone, for his ways are all I know, and I never was a sodger.' But, upon my conscience, they had other thoughts in their heads, for they ordered him into the ranks to be drilled just like the recruits they took the day before.
"'Musha, isn't this hard ?' said my father.

'Here I am, an ould vitrin that ought to be discharged on a pension with two-and-sixpence a day, obliged to go capering about the barrack-yard, practising the goose-step, or some other nonsense not becoming my age nor my habits.' But so it was.

Well, this went on for some time, and sure, if they were hard on my father, hadn't he his revenge; for he nigh broke their hearts with his stupidity.
Oh, nothing in life could equal him! Devil a thing, no matter how easy, he could learn at all; and so far from caring for being in confinement, it was that he liked best.