han I thought good for him.

There was three of 'em (in company, I mean), and I knowed the third well.
When last met, he had on a white Roman shirt, and a bishop's miter covered
with leopard-skin, and played the clarionet all wrong, in a band, at a
wild-beast show.

This gent took on not to know me, and Mr. Chops said:

"Gentlemen, this is an old friend of former days"; and Normandy looked at
me through a eyeglass, and said, "Magsman, glad to see ye!" which I'll
take my oath, he wasn't.

Mr. Chops, to get him convenient to the table, had his chair on a
throne, much of the form of George Fourth's in the canvas, but he hardly
appeared to me to be King there in any p'int of view, for his two
gentlemen ordered about like emperors. They was all dressed like
May-day--gorgeous!--and as to wine, they swam in all sorts.

I made the round of the bottles, first separate (to say I had done it),
and then tried two of 'em as half-and-half, then t'other two. Altogether,
I passed a pleasant evenin', but with a tendency to feel muddled, until I
considered it good manners to get up and say:

"Mr. Chops, the best of friends must part. I thank you for the wariety of
foreign drains you have stood so 'ansome. I looks towards you in red wine,
and I takes my leave."

Mr. Chops replied:

"If you'll just hitch me out of this over your right arm, Magsman, and
carry me down-stairs, I'll see you out."

I said I couldn't think of such a thing, but he would have it, so I lifted
him off his throne. He smelt strong of Madeary, and I couldn't help
thinking, as I carried him down, that it was like carrying a large bottle
full of wine, with a rayther ugly stopper, a good deal out of proportion.

When I set him on the door-mat in the hall, he kept me close to him by
holding on to my coat-collar, and he whispers:

"I ain't 'appy, Magsman."

"What's on your mind, Mr. Chops?"

"They don't use me well. They ain't grateful to me. They puts me on the
mantel-piece when I won't have in more Champagne-wine, and they locks me
in the sideboard when I won't give up my property."

"Get rid of 'em, Mr. Chops."

"I can't. We're in society together, and what would society say?"

"Come out of society," says I.

"I can't. You don't know what you're talking about. When you have once got
into society, you mustn't come out of it."

"Then, if you'll excuse the freedom, Mr. Chops," was my remark, shaking my
Ed grave, "I think it's a pity you ever went in."