window, and a strong-box on the table. And but for better-regulated
minds contending for a bottle and screw and the attitude of drawing,--and
carrying their point,--it would have been so handed down to posterity.

I am now brought to the title of the present remarks. Having, I hope
without offence to any quarter, offered such observations as I felt it my
duty to offer, in a free country which has ever dominated the seas, on
the general subject, I will now proceed to wait on the particular
question.

At a momentous period of my life, when I was off, so far as concerned
notice given, with a House that shall be nameless,--for the question on
which I took my departing stand was a fixed charge for waiters, and no
House as commits itself to that eminently Un-English act of more than
foolishness and baseness shall be advertised by me,--I repeat, at a
momentous crisis, when I was off with a House too mean for mention, and
not yet on with that to which I have ever since had the honour of being
attached in the capacity of Head, {1} I was casting about what to do
next. Then it were that proposals were made to me on behalf of my
present establishment. Stipulations were necessary on my part,
emendations were necessary on my part: in the end, ratifications ensued
on both sides, and I entered on a new career.

We are a bed business, and a coffee-room business. We are not a general
dining business, nor do we wish it. In consequence, when diners drop in,
we know what to give 'em as will keep 'em away another time. We are a
Private Room or Family business also; but Coffee-room principal. Me and
the Directory and the Writing Materials and cetrer occupy a place to
ourselves--a place fended of up a step or two at the end of the Coffee-
room, in what I call the good old-fashioned style. The good