Published: Quartette: The Christmas Annual of the Civil and Military Gazette, Lahore [19 December] 1885.

Attribution: Diary, 1885: ‘Evolved my idea for the unlimited Draw of Tick Boileau, and did some of it’ (24 September 1885); ‘Went ahead on the Tick Boileau biz’ (3 October 1885).

Text: Quartette.

Note: Reprinted in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets and in Harbord, i, 626–33.

He came to us from Naogong, somewhere in Central India; and as soon as we saw him we all voted him a Beast. That was in the Mess of the 45th Bengal Cavalry, stationed at Pindi; and everything I'm going to write about happened this season. I've told you he was an awful Beast – old even for a subaltern; but then he'd joined the Army late, and had knocked about the world a good deal. We didn't know that at first. I wish we had. It would have saved the honour of the Mess. He was called “Tick” in Naogong, because he was never out of debt; but that didn't make us think him a Beast. Quite the other way, for most of us were pretty well dipped ourselves. No; what we hated about the fellow was his “dark horsiness.” I can't express it any better than that; and, besides, it's an awful nuisance having to write at all. But all the other fellows in the Mess say I'm the only man who can handle a pen decently; and that I must, for their credit, tell the world exactly how it came about. Everyone is chaffing us so beastily now.

Well, I was saying that we didn't like Tick Boileau's “dark horsiness.” I mean by that, you never knew what the fellow could do and what he could not; and he was always coming out, with that beastly conceited grin on his face, in a new line – ‘specially before women – and making the other man, who had tried to do the same thing feel awfully small and humble. That was his strong point – simpering and cutting a fellow out when he was doing his hardest at something or other. Same with billiards; same with riding; same with the banjo; he could really make the banjo talk – better even than Banjo Browne at Kasauli you know; same with tennis.