I found the party to be thus composed. Firstly, myself. Secondly, a
very decent man indeed, with his right arm in a sling, who had a certain
clean agreeable smell of wood about him, from which I judged him to have
something to do with shipbuilding. Thirdly, a little sailor-boy, a mere
child, with a profusion of rich dark brown hair, and deep womanly-looking
eyes. Fourthly, a shabby-genteel personage in a threadbare black suit,
and apparently in very bad circumstances, with a dry suspicious look; the
absent buttons on his waistcoat eked out with red tape; and a bundle of
extraordinarily tattered papers sticking out of an inner breast-pocket.
Fifthly, a foreigner by birth, but an Englishman in speech, who carried
his pipe in the band of his hat, and lost no time in telling me, in an
easy, simple, engaging way, that he was a watchmaker from Geneva, and
travelled all about the Continent, mostly on foot, working as a
journeyman, and seeing new countries,--possibly (I thought) also
smuggling a watch or so, now and then. Sixthly, a little widow, who had
been very pretty and was still very young, but whose beauty had been
wrecked in some great misfortune, and whose manner was remarkably timid,
scared, and solitary. Seventhly and lastly, a Traveller of a kind
familiar to my boyhood, but now almost obsolete,--a Book-Pedler, who had
a quantity of Pamphlets and Numbers with him, and who presently boasted
that he could repeat more verses in an evening than he could sell in a
twelvemonth.

All these I have mentioned in the order in which they sat at table. I
presided, and the matronly presence faced me. We were not long in taking
our places, for the supper had arrived with me, in the following
procession:

Myself with the pitcher.
Ben with Beer.