, for she died when my uncle
was two years and seven months old, and I think it's very likely that,
even without the gravel, his top-boots would have puzzled the good lady
not a little; to say nothing of his jolly red face. However, there he
lay, and I have heard my uncle say, many a time, that the man said who
picked him up that he was smiling as merrily as if he had tumbled
out for a treat, and that after they had bled him, the first faint
glimmerings of returning animation, were his jumping up in bed, bursting
out into a loud laugh, kissing the young woman who held the basin,
and demanding a mutton chop and a pickled walnut. He was very fond of
pickled walnuts, gentlemen. He said he always found that, taken without
vinegar, they relished the beer.

'My uncle's great journey was in the fall of the leaf, at which time
he collected debts, and took orders, in the north; going from London to
Edinburgh, from Edinburgh to Glasgow, from Glasgow back to Edinburgh,
and thence to London by the smack. You are to understand that his second
visit to Edinburgh was for his own pleasure. He used to go back for a
week, just to look up his old friends; and what with breakfasting with
this one, lunching with that, dining with the third, and supping with
another, a pretty tight week he used to make of it. I don't know whether
any of you, gentlemen, ever partook of a real substantial hospitable
Scotch breakfast, and then went out to a slight lunch of a bushel of
oysters, a dozen or so of bottled ale, and a noggin or two of whiskey to
close up with. If you ever did, you will agree with me that it requires
a pretty strong head to go out to dinner and supper afterwards.

'But bless your hearts and eyebrows, all this sort of thing was nothing
to my uncle! He was so well seasoned, that it was mere child's play. I
have heard him say that he could see the Dundee people out, any day, and
walk home afterwards without staggering; and yet the Dundee people have
as strong heads and as strong punch, gentlemen, as you are likely to
meet with, between the poles. I have heard of a Glasgow man and a Dundee
man drinking against each other for fifteen hours at a sitting. They
were both suffocated, as nearly as could be ascertained, at the same
moment, but with this trifling exception, gentlemen, they were not a bit
the worse for it.

'One night, within four-and-twenty hours of the time when he had settled
to take shipping for London, my uncle supped at th