Читать книгу The Story of a Peninsular Veteran. Sergeant in the Forty-Third Light Infantry, during the Peninsular War онлайн

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Agreeably with the religious views which my mother had entertained, she endeavoured to teach me the principles of Papacy. I was, moreover, frequently taken to mass: but, being young and heedless, one system of religion was to me as good as another; in other words, I was careless respecting them all. Indeed, I have reason to believe that my indifference in this respect was to my mother a source of great grief. Meantime I had arrived at the fourteenth year of my age; a period, generally speaking, of no small vanity and self-complacency, and in which many men think themselves qualified, by the dignity of their teens, to shake off the trammels of parental guidance. Among others, I determined to walk alone; but unfortunately I cannot, on reflection, boast of my first step. Among the youths with whom I contracted some acquaintance, was a dissolute lad about my own age; by whose enticement, when only just turned fifteen, I enlisted in the Queen’s County militia. Not that my conduct, like his, had been openly immoral; yet he had gained over me an ascendancy I could not resist. Evil communications corrupt good manners; and perhaps the apparent freedom, the frankness and gaiety of an open-hearted soldier’s holiday life, had an influence which, though not acknowledged, was really felt. But, O, my mother! for when I became a soldier she was still living. I had in this deed of hardihood well-nigh forgotten her.