ad
known him, for if you had, you would have been all, by this time, in the
ordinary course of nature, if not dead, at all events so near it, as to
have taken to stopping at home and giving up company, which would
have deprived me of the inestimable pleasure of addressing you at this
moment. Gentlemen, I wish your fathers and mothers had known my uncle.
They would have been amazingly fond of him, especially your respectable
mothers; I know they would. If any two of his numerous virtues
predominated over the many that adorned his character, I should say they
were his mixed punch and his after-supper song. Excuse my dwelling on
these melancholy recollections of departed worth; you won't see a man
like my uncle every day in the week.

'I have always considered it a great point in my uncle's character,
gentlemen, that he was the intimate friend and companion of Tom Smart,
of the great house of Bilson and Slum, Cateaton Street, City. My uncle
collected for Tiggin and Welps, but for a long time he went pretty near
the same journey as Tom; and the very first night they met, my uncle
took a fancy for Tom, and Tom took a fancy for my uncle. They made a bet
of a new hat before they had known each other half an hour, who should
brew the best quart of punch and drink it the quickest. My uncle was
judged to have won the making, but Tom Smart beat him in the drinking by
about half a salt-spoonful. They took another quart apiece to drink each
other's health in, and were staunch friends ever afterwards. There's a
destiny in these things, gentlemen; we can't help it.

'In personal appearance, my uncle was a trifle shorter than the middle
size; he was a thought stouter too, than the ordinary run of people, and
perhaps his face might be a shade redder. He had the jolliest face you
ever saw, gentleman: something like Punch, with a handsome nose and
chin; his eyes were always twinkling and sparkling with good-humour;
and a smile--not one of your unmeaning wooden grins, but a real, merry,
hearty, good-tempered smile--was perpetually on his countenance. He
was pitched out of his gig once, and knocked, head first, against a
milestone. There he lay, stunned, and so cut about the face with some
gravel which had been heaped up alongside it, that, to use my uncle's
own strong expression, if his mother could have revisited the earth,
she wouldn't have known him. Indeed, when I come to think of the matter,
gentlemen, I feel pretty sure she wouldn't