In the late autumn of 1890 Admiral Sir Edmund Fremantle brought his flagship, the Boadicea, right up the Hooghly, and moored her alongside the Maidan.  The ship remained there for six weeks, the Admiral taking up his quarters at Government House.  My sister Lady Lansdowne had a mistaken weakness for midshipmen, whom she most inappropriately termed “those dear little fellows.”  At that time midshipmen went to sea at fifteen years of age, so they were much younger than at present.  As these boys were constantly at Government House, four of us thought that we would lend the midshipmen our ponies for an early morning ride.  The boys all started off at a gallop, and every one of them was bolted with as soon as he reached the Maidan.  As they had no riding-breeches, their trousers soon rucked up, exhibiting ample expanses of bare legs; they had no notion of riding, but managed to stick on somehow by clinging to pommel and mane, banging here into a sedate Judge of the High Court, with an apologetic “Sorry, sir, but this swine of a pony won’t steer;” barging there into a pompous Anglo-Indian official, as they yelled to their ponies, “Easy now, dogs-body, or you’ll unship us both;” galloping as hard as their ponies could lay legs to the ground, cannoning into half the white inhabitants of Calcutta, but always with imperturbable good-humour.  When their panting ponies tried to pull up to recover their wind a little, these rising hopes of the British Navy kicked them with their heels into a gallop again, shouting strange nautical oaths, and grinning from ear to ear with delight, until finally four ponies lathered in sweat, in the last stages of exhaustion, returned to Government House, and four dripping boys alighted, declaring that they had had the time of their lives in spite of a considerable loss of cuticle.  It was the same at the dances at Government House.  The smart young subalterns simply weren’t in it; the midshipmen got all the best partners, and, to do them justice, they could dance very well.  They started with the music and whirled their partners round the room at the top of their speed, in the furnace temperature of Calcutta, without drawing rein for one second until the band stopped, when a dishevelled and utterly exhausted damsel collapsed limply into a chair, whilst a deliquescent brass-buttoned youth, with a sodden wisp of white linen and black silk round his neck to indicate the spot where he had once possessed a collar and tie, endeavoured to fan his partner into some semblance of coolness again.

Lady Lansdowne having invited eight midshipmen to spend a Sunday at Barrackpore, they arrived there by launch with a drag net, which the Viceroy had given them leave to use on the largest of the ponds.  My sister at once set them down to play lawn-tennis, hoping to work off some of their superfluous energy in this way.  In honour of the occasion, the midshipmen had extracted their best white flannels from their chests, and they proceeded to array themselves in