Page:Life memoirs & pedigree of Thomas Hamilton Dickson.pdf/9

 would fight any two Scotch troopers. The challenge was accepted, and the day fixed, when the principal nobility, both English and Scotch, came to see the battle. The Scotchman was allowed to be superior to any in the troop in personal prowess: he was 6 feet 5¾ inches on his stocking soles, and was proportionable in all other respects, and, withal, a very comely man, and mild in temper as a sleeping sea—but, like that sea, when roused by storms, none could oppose him with any degree of success. When the combatants entered the ground, the bully stripped himself to the skin. The Scotchman was void of science, and put himself to no trouble in preparing for the contest. When the ground was clear, and the signal given, the Englishman struck his antagonist a blow on the right shoulder. The Scotchman said, "hang him, let him come that way again!" and as he was coming a second time, the Scotchman held out one of his arms in order to parry off the blow, but the Englishman coming rather hastily in contact with it, he fell down to the ground, and could do no more, and when victory was proclaimed, by cheers, principally by the Scotch nobility, he took up the bully in his arms, and threw him about ten yards from him, to the astonishment of the nobility and spectators in general.

My father, when he was in the Life Guards, sometimes while guarding his Majesty King George the Third, struck knees with his sovereign, and he was apt to imagine that he was blood royal at the time.