when Saturday came, and with it, of course, my Saturday Review. I
remember at New York coming down to breakfast at the hotel one morning,
after a criticism had appeared in the New York Herald, in which an Irish
writer had given me a dressing for a certain lecture on Swift. Ah my
dear little enemy of the T. R, D., what were the cudgels in YOUR little
billet-doux compared to those noble New York shillelaghs? All through
the Union, the literary sons of Erin have marched alpeen-stock in hand,
and in every city of the States they call each other and everybody else
the finest names. Having come to breakfast, then, in the public room, I
sit down, and see--that the nine people opposite have all got New York
Heralds in their hands. One dear little lady, whom I knew, and who
sat opposite, gave a pretty blush, and popped her paper under the
tablecloth. I told her I had had my whipping already in my own private
room, and begged her to continue her reading. I may have undergone
agonies, you see, but every man who has been bred at an English public
school comes away from a private interview with Dr. Birch with a calm,
even a smiling face. And this is not impossible, when you are prepared.
You screw your courage up--you go through the business. You come
back and take your seat on the form, showing not the least symptom of
uneasiness or of previous unpleasantries. But to be caught suddenly up,
and whipped in the bosom of your family--to sit down to breakfast, and
cast your innocent eye on a paper, and find, before you are aware, that
the Saturday Monitor or Black Monday Instructor has hoisted you and is
laying on--that is indeed a trial. Or perhaps the family has looked at
the dreadful paper beforehand, and weakly tries to hide it. "Where is
the Instructor, or the Monitor?" say you. "Where is that paper?" says
mamma to one of the young ladies. Lucy hasn't it. Fanny hasn't seen it.
Emily thinks that the governess has it. At last, out it is brought,
that awful paper! Papa is amazingly tickled with the article on Thomson;
thinks that show up of Johnson is very lively; and now--heaven be good