is the carving partner who attends to the joints, and the other is the
laughing partner who attends to the jokes."

The general conversation was chiefly carried on at the upper end of the
table; as the authors there seemed to possess the greatest courage of
the tongue. As to the crew at the lower end, if they did not make much
figure in talking, they did in eating. Never was there a more
determined, inveterate, thoroughly-sustained attack on the trencher,
than by this phalanx of masticators. When the cloth was removed, and
the wine began to circulate, they grew very merry and jocose among
themselves. Their jokes, however, if by chance any of them reached the
upper end of the table, seldom produced much effect. Even the laughing
partner did not seem to think it necessary to honor them with a smile;
which my neighbour Buckthorne accounted for, by informing me that there
was a certain degree of popularity to be obtained, before a bookseller
could afford to laugh at an author's jokes.

Among this crew of questionable gentlemen thus seated below the salt,
my eye singled out one in particular. He was rather shabbily dressed;
though he had evidently made the most of a rusty black coat, and wore
his shirt-frill plaited and puffed out voluminously at the bosom. His
face was dusky, but florid--perhaps a little too florid, particularly
about the nose, though the rosy hue gave the greater lustre to a
twinkling black eye. He had a little the look of a boon companion, with
that dash of the poor devil in it which gives an inexpressibly mellow
tone to a man's humor. I had seldom seen a face of richer promise; but
never was promise so ill kept. He said nothing; ate and drank with the
keen appetite of a gazetteer, and scarcely stopped to laugh even at the
good jokes from the upper end of the table. I inquired who he was.
Buckthorne looked at him attentively. "Gad," said he, "I have seen that
face before, but where I cannot recollect. He cannot be an author of
any note. I suppose some writer of sermons or grinder of foreign
travels."

After dinner we retired to another room to take tea and coffee, where
we were re-enforced by a cloud of inferior guests. Authors of small
volumes in boards, and pamphlets stitched in blue paper. These had not
as yet arrived to the importance of a dinner invitation, but were
invited occasionally to pass the evening "in a friendly way." They were
very respectful to the partners, and indeed seemed to stand