'Major Stafford was, as I have already hinted, of high unblemished lineage; but Fortune, in bestowing this mark of her good-will upon him, had exhausted all her favours, and denied him that portion of the good things of this world so necessary to secure to rank the respect it claims. He was what is commonly called "a soldier of fortune," that is to say, a soldier of no fortune, - but John Bull is peculiarly felicitous in misnomers of this kind. The man who demands payment under a threat of arrest he terms a "Solicitor," names a cinder-heap in the suburbs "Mount Pleasant," and calls a well-known piece of water the "Serpentine River," because it is not a river, and because it is not serpentine.'
from Some Account of My Cousin Nicholas by Thomas Ingoldsby (Richard Barham) (Volume I, Chapter I)
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