Denton Examiner, Audenshaw, Hooley Hill and Dukinfield Advertiser. — 1876-09-09 (Denton, Greater Manchester, England)

PRACTICAL JOKING.  Two officers attached to one of the regiments stationed at Colchester were disturbed at an early hour ,the other morning while busily engaged whitewashing the lower windows and doorposts of the house of Captain Stuart, of the 18th Hussars, in Culver-street. When taken to the policestation and charge 1 with the offence, they acknowledged themselves to be "officers and Gentlemen," though they had the look of artisans who had been working late and early to finish up a job. As Captain Stuart generously declined to make any charge against them, and merely insisted upon the payment of expenses incurred, with the addition of the gift of a sum of money to some charitable institution, the two Gentlemen, whose names do not appear, were permitted to retire. The Captain,of the 18th Hussars could not have treated the officers more kindly and forbearingly if they had devoted themselves to whitewashing his character when it did not stand in need of any such lusfration. Colchester, we fear, must be pretty well accustomed to military freaks in the small hours of the morning and at all hours of the night. It is stated that, a few nights ago, while carrying on their after-mess tomfoolery, three or four "officers and Gentlemen" rode ou horseback through the High-street of that garrison town dressed in white night-shirts, or as the articles of undress are more modestly called, night-frocks. For this ridiculous freak the commanding officers might have found an appropriate punishment by compelling them to ride in kilts up hill anti down on a wooden saddle such as seems to be in use in Albania, Practical joking— which may be considered, according to its manifestations, an offensive, expensive, silly, inipertinent, or cruel practice—has always found more favour in military circles than anywhere else, and there is reason to fear that in some regiments it is still rampant, notwithstanding the reforms that have been introduced ~into the army of late years The experiences of Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne, when connected with the 6th Carabineers, were scarcely of a kind to induce young gentlemen, with tastes more relined than coarsely frolicsome, to enter  the military service of the country. To lay a donkey in the bed of a young lieutenant, whose peculiarities make him a safe Data, may be regarded by 1301310 as a piece of exoellent fooling—of humorous horseplay; but it is scarcely the sort of amusement, whether before or after mess, in which we should expect to see "officers and gentlemen" like to indulge. The usual combination of those two titles makes it apparent that every officer is presumed to be a gentleman, and since this is the case the greater is the pity and the scandal that gentlemanly conduct is so often conspicious by its absence in officers, rooms and garrison towns. There is surely the posiibility of giving a high flow of spirits free and natural and reasonable play without indulging in mad pranks, sometimes so mischievous that they seem , largely spiced with malice. What was the dominaut motive that animated the two officers who stealthily approached the front of Captain Stuart's house in Culver-street, Colchester, in the small hours of morning, carrying in their hands,not swords or daggers or burglarious jemmies, but simply a brush and a pail of limewash ? Was it the mere love of nocturnal folio, akin to the pastime ~f door-bell-ringing and knocker-wrenching which lingers as a memory of boyhood in the minds (Amos, grown-up men? Or was it a spiteful freak—a whitewashing which • curiously :reflected ,black thoughts and bitter feelings? The . solution of these questions we must leave to the military stationed at Colchester, aided by the watchful policeman who was on duty near MI ti.aitits' Church on the morning in question, and who was providentially attracted to the spot where the white-washers were at work • by the hideous dawn-searing I; nind of smashing glass, Surely, after all, there must have been malice prepense in the wasteful breaking of window panes. But practical joking of a mischievous kind while superabundant in barracks, is by no • means restricted to military circles. It is common —much too oommon—in other, services, professions, and trades. The naval serviee can hold a candle to the military in this matter any day. There are few people who, from reading or otherwise, cannot recall the rough experience ol persecuted "middies" on board ship. Even lawyers' clerks and counting-house °has, when moved by whim or spite or other eccentric impulse, resort at times to such evi practices as tilling ink-bottles with water, and tricking each other to sit down upon a vacuum instead of a three-legged stool. In workshops, again, there is almost invariably one man who is disliked, for some cause ur another, by his fellow-workmen, and the. practical jokes played upon him at all hears of the day, some of them ludicrous enough and some of them only cruel, might suffice to tempt the poor wretch to end his misery by committing suicide. Who knows but: at Sheffield rattening is regarded by the unionist cutlers as a oapital practical joke?