ow-men,
after a night's debauch; yet at the same time, I am not aware of any one
having perfectly conveyed even a passing likeness to the mingled throng
of sensations which crowd one's brain on such an occasion. The doubt of
what has passed, by degrees yielding to the half-consciousness of the
truth, the feeling of shame, inseparable except to the habitually
hard-goer, for the events thus dimly pictured, the racking headache and
intense thirst, with the horror of the potation recently indulged in: the
recurring sense of the fun or drollery of a story or an incident which
provokes us again to laugh despite the jarring of our brain from the
shaking. All this and more most men have felt, and happy are they when
their waking thoughts are limited to such, at such times as these--the
matter becomes considerably worse, when the following morning calls for
some considerable exertion, for which even in your best and calmest
moments, you only find yourself equal.

It is truly unpleasant, on rubbing your eyes and opening your ears, to
discover that the great bell is ringing the half-hour before your
quarterly examination at college, while Locke, Lloyd, and Lucian are
dancing a reel through your brain, little short of madness; scarcely less
agreeable is it, to learn that your friend Captain Wildfire is at the
door in his cab, to accompany you to the Phoenix, to stand within twelve
paces of a cool gentleman who has been sitting with his arm in Eau de
Cologne for the last half-hour, that he may pick you out "artist-like."
There are, besides these, innumerable situations in which our
preparations of the night would appear, as none of the wisest; but I
prefer going at once to my own, which, although considerably inferior in
difficulty, was not without its own "desagremens."

When I awoke, therefore, on board the "Fire-fly," the morning after our
dinner-party, I was perfectly unable, by any mental process within my
reach, to discover where I was. On ship-board I felt I must be--the
narrow berth--the gilded and panelled cabin which met my eye, through my
half-open curtains, and that peculiar swelling motion inseparable from a
vessel in the water, all satisfied me of this fact. I looked about me,
but could see no one to give me the least idea of my position. Could it
be that we were on our way out to Corfu, and that I had been ill for some
time past?

But this cabin had little resemblance to a transport; perhaps it might be
a frig