Next morning, when we came out to breakfast, imagine my astonishment
at seeing a tureen of half cold soup on the table, and nothing else!
I could hardly believe my eyes, and hastened to the kitchen to
explain that this was rather too much of a novelty in the
gastronomic line. If I live to be a hundred years old, I shall
never forget the sight--at once terrible and absurd--which met my
eyes. Before the kitchen fire stood Isabella, having evidently
slept in her clothes all night. She looked wretched and bloated,
and quite curiously dirty, as black as if she had been up the
chimney; and even I could see that, early as was the hour, she was
hopelessly drunk. Between both of her nerveless, black hands, she
held a poker, with which she struck, from time to time, a feeble
blow on a piled-up heap of plates, which she persisted in
considering a lump of coal. The fire was nearly out, but she
hastened to assure me that if she could only break this lump of coal
it would soon burn up. Need I say that I rescued my plates at once,
and marched the bearded one off to her own apartment.

Oh, how dimmed its dainty freshness had become since even yesterday!
Sarah was summoned, and confessed that she had known last night that
"Hisabella" had gone on the "burst," having bought, for some
fabulous sum, a bottle of rum from a passing swagger. It was all
very dreadful, and worst of all was the scene of tears and penitence
I had to endure when the rum was finished. The dray, however,
relieved me of the incubus of her presence; and that was the only
instance of drunkenness I came across among my domestic changes and
chances.