twenty-eight couple, and who, turning to his friend, said, "Oh, the
distance is nothing, but it is the pace that kills."

The first evidence I shewed of any return to reason, was a strong
anxiety to be at my quarters; but how to get there I knew not. The faint
glimmering of sense I possessed told me that "to stand was to fall," and
I was ashamed to go on all-fours, which prudence suggested.

At this moment I remembered I had brought with me my cane, which, from a
perhaps pardonable vanity, I was fond of parading. It was a present from
the officers of my regiment--many of them, alas, since dead--and had a
most splendid gold head, with a stag at the top--the arms of the
regiment. This I would not have lost for any consideration I can
mention; and this now was gone! I looked around me on every side; I
groped beneath the table; I turned the sleeping sots who lay about in no
very gentle fashion; but, alas, it was gone. I sprang to my feet and
only then remembered how unfit I was to follow up the search, as tables,
chairs, lights, and people seemed all rocking and waving before me.
However, I succeeded in making my way, through one room into another,
sometimes guiding my steps along the walls; and once, as I recollect,
seeking the diagonal of a room, I bisected a quadrille with such
ill-directed speed, as to run foul of a Cork dandy and his partner who
were just performing the "en avant:" but though I saw them lie tumbled
in the dust by the shock of my encounter--for I had upset them--I still
held on the even tenor of my way. In fact, I had feeling for but one
loss; and, still in pursuit of my cane, I reached the hall-door. Now,
be it known that the architecture of the Cork Mansion House has but one
fault, but that fault is a grand one, and a strong evidence of how
unsuited English architects are to provide buildings for a people whose
tastes and habits they but imperfectly understand--be it known, then,