I found out that colonels can stay until they drop dead or get a walker and being a critical medical specialty as an Army trained emergency room doctor, I could stay until age 67.

He went to London in 1823 and became a reporter for one of the daily papers and later turned to writing fiction. I (London: 1843). One of his most famous works is The Collegians a novel based on a trial he had reported on that of John Scanlan a Protestant Anglo-Irish man who murdered Ellen Hanley a young Catholic Irish girl.