the dining-room, where at last we all got seated; and here let me briefly
vindicate the motives of my friend--should any unkind person be found to
impute to his selection of a residence, any base and grovelling passion
for gourmandaise, that day's experience should be an eternal vindication
of him. The soup--alas! that I should so far prostitute the word; for
the black broth of Sparta was mock turtle in comparison--retired to make
way for a mass of beef, whose tenderness I did not question; for it sank
beneath the knife of the carver like a feather bed--the skill of Saladin
himself would have failed to divide it. The fish was a most rebellious
pike, and nearly killed every loyal subject at table; and then down the
sides were various comestibles of chickens, with azure bosoms, and hams
with hides like a rhinoceros; covered dishes of decomposed vegetable
matter, called spinach and cabbage; potatoes arrayed in small masses, and
browned, resembling those ingenious architectural structures of mud,
children raise in the high ways, and call dirt-pies. Such were the chief
constituents of the "feed;" and such, I am bound to confess, waxed
beautifully less under the vigorous onslaught of the party.

The conversation soon became both loud and general. That happy
familiarity--which I had long believed to be the exclusive prerogative of
a military mess, where constant daily association sustains the interest
of the veriest trifles--I here found in a perfection I had not
anticipated, with this striking difference, that there was no absurd
deference to any existing code of etiquette in the conduct of the party
generally, each person quizzing his neighbour in the most free and easy
style imaginable, and all, evidently from long habit and conventional
usage, seeming to enjoy the practice exceedingly. Thus, droll allusions,
good stories, and smart repartees, fell thick as hail, and twice as
harmless, which any where else that I had ever heard of, would assuredly
have called for more explanations, and perhaps gunpowder, in the morning,