I made this gentleman’s acquaintance as usual at the play-table, of which he was a constant frequenter.  Indeed, one could not but admire the spirit and gallantry with which he pursued his favourite pastime; for, though worn out by gout and a myriad of diseases, a cripple wheeled about in a chair, and suffering pangs of agony, yet you would see him every morning and every evening at his post behind the delightful green cloth:  and if, as it would often happen, his own hands were too feeble or inflamed to hold the box, he would call the mains, nevertheless, and have his valet or a friend to throw for him.  I like this courageous spirit in a man; the greatest successes in life have been won by such indomitable perseverance.

I was by this time one of the best-known characters in Europe; and the fame of my exploits, my duels, my courage at play, would bring crowds around me in any public society where I appeared.  I could show reams of scented paper, to prove that this eagerness to make my acquaintance was not confined to the gentlemen only; but that I hate boasting, and only talk of myself in so far as it is necessary to relate myself’s adventures:  the most singular of any man’s in Europe.  Well, Sir Charles Lyndon’s first acquaintance with me originated in the right honourable knight’s winning 700 pieces of me at picquet (for which he was almost my match); and I lost them with much good-humour, and paid them:  and paid them, you may be sure, punctually.  Indeed, I will say this for myself, that losing money at play never in the least put me out of good-humour with the winner, and that wherever I found a superior, I was always ready to acknowledge and hail him.

Lyndon was very proud of winning from so celebrated a person, and we contracted a kind of intimacy; which, however, did not for a while go beyond pump-room attentions, and conversations over the supper-table at play:  but which gradually increased, until I was admitted into his more private friendship.  He was a very free-spoken man (the gentry of those days were much prouder than at present), and used to say to me in his haughty easy way, ’Hang it, Mr. Barry, you have no more manners than a barber, and I think my black footman has been better educated than you; but you are a young fellow of originality and pluck, and I like you, sir, because you seem determined to go to the deuce by a way of your own.’  I would thank him laughingly for this compliment, and say, that as he was bound to the next world much sooner than I was, I would be obliged to him to get comfortable quarters arranged there for me.  He used also to be immensely amused with my stories about the splendour of my family and the magnificence of Castle Brady:  he would never tire of listening or laughing at those histories.

‘Stick to the trumps, however, my lad,’ he would say, when I told him of my misfortunes in the conjugal line, and how near I had been winning the greatest fortune in Germany.  ’Do anything but marry, my artless Irish rustic’ (he called me by a multiplicity of queer names).  ’Cultivate your great talents in the gambling line; but mind this, that a woman will beat you.’