State (on condition of our eating no more rumpsteaks) has sent down our pardons, and I've got them both at this moment in my pocket.'

"Here was an answer to give a man whom he had just seen swallow laudanum enough to kill a cart-horse! After staring at him for half a

minute, with thought too deep for tears'-indeed I was studying which way to sacrifice him— my indignation at length found utterance

Why

you envious, overgrown villain,' said I, 'why did you not tell me this before?' 'Why did not I,' replied he (as if confident I could not possibly object to his most exquisite reason), 'why, because you did not ask me!' What signified arguing with such a dolt? I determined to make

short work of it. Now, you fat fool,' cried I,

(going up to him with my clenched fist), 'now I must go and have the laudanum taken out of me with the stomach-pump, through your stupidity

take that!' (knocking him off his perch into the

empty hogshead, the top of which suddenly gave way behind him); and I think I awoke with the noise he made in bawling out—'What's that for?' From this specimen," concluded Dick, "you may judge whether I am not as much to be pitied, for my nightly visions, as any opium-eater in England. I'll dream against the best of them for a veal cutlet any night he likes."

This chat had brought us up to the place which we intended visiting; we entered, and found the ladies had arrived before us. I introduced Dick, who blushed as he bowed, and was received very graciously, but with a kind of conscious reserve on the part of the genteel widow, which I thought augured not ill for him. Dewlap, though evidently gratified with his reception by the ladies, was not quite pleased to find they had brought with them our old acquaintance Toby Aircastle, a mere mathematical line of a man, whose lath-like apparition con

trasts so provokingly with Dick's circular tendencies, that few can resist hazarding a hit now and then on the subject. Toby, who is a married man, as well as a professed joker, rather relishes than dislikes this state of juxta-position with Dewlap, and often provokes him to an encounter; in which, however, Dick is sure to suffer most, though he may seem to come off victorious; for he evidently envies Toby his leanness, and would give the world if the sarcasms which, acting on the defensive, he is obliged to let fly at Toby, could be fairly levelled at himself. Dewlap now, therefore (ladies being present), treated Mr. Aircastle (as he studiously called him) with the gravest respect, and seemed as fearful of making a false step in conversation as a young legacy-hunter would be of treading on the gouty toe of his rich and irritable uncle. Having, while the females were a little in advance, inquired, with the most considerate polits