sorts of messes in the afternoon; and he wasted twice as much rum and
brandy and lemons in his trash, as I should want to make good punch
of. He was quite surprised, too, when I told him that our mince-pies
were kept shut up in the larder, and only brought out at meal-times,
and then just one apiece; he said they had mince-pies always going,
and he got one whenever he liked. Old Brown never blows up about that
sort of thing; he likes Adolphus to enjoy himself in the holidays,
particularly at Christmas."

The speaker was a boy--if I may be allowed to use the word in speaking
of an individual whose jackets had for some time past been resigned
to a younger member of his family, and who daily, in the privacy of
his own apartment, examined his soft cheeks by the aid of his sisters'
"back-hair glass." He was a handsome boy too; tall, and like
David--"ruddy, and of a fair countenance;" and his face, though
clouded then, bore the expression of general amiability. He was the
eldest son in a large young family, and was being educated at one of
the best public schools. He did not, it must be confessed, think
either small beer or small beans of himself; and as to the beer and
beans that his family thought of him, I think it was pale ale and
kidney-beans at least.

Young Hopeful had, however, his weak points like the rest of us; and
perhaps one of the weakest was the difficulty he found in amusing
himself without _bothering_ other people. He had quite a monomania for
proposing the most troublesome "larks" at the most inconvenient
moments; and if his plans were thwarted, an Æolian harp is cheerful
compared to the tone in which, arguing and lamenting, he

"Fought his battles o'er again,"