less; in fact, I'd
find myself restricted enough with that. Whenever I had to think about
money, it was hateful to me. Tell him two is the lowest, the very
lowest, I 'd accept of; and if he wishes to treat me handsomely, he may
exceed it. You 're not to judge of my habits, sir, from what you see
here," added he, fiercely; "this is not what I have been accustomed
to. You don't know the number of people who look up to me for bread. My
father's table was laid for thirty every day, and it had been well for
us if as many more were not fed at our cost elsewhere."

"I have often heard tell of Meagh-valley House and its hospitalities,"
said Crowther, blandly.

"'Come over and drink a pipe of port' was the invitation when I was a
boy. A servant was sent round to the neighborhood to say that a
hogshead of claret was to be broached on such a day, and to beg that the
gentlemen around would come over and help to drink it,--ay, to drink it
out! Your piperly hounds, with their two-bottle magnum, think themselves
magnificent nowadays; why, in my time they 'd have been laughed to
scorn!"

"They were glorious times indeed," cried Crowther, with mad enthusiasm.

"Glorious times to beggar a nation, to prostitute public honor and
private virtue," broke in Curtis, passionately; "to make men heartless
debauchees first, that they might become shameless scoundrels after; to
teach them a youth of excess and an old age of venality. These were your
Glorious Times! But you, sir, may be forgiven for praising them; to you,
and others like you, they have been indeed 'Glorious Times'! Out of them
grew those lawsuits and litigations that have enriched you, while they
ruined us. Out of that blessed era of orgie and debauch came beggared
families and houseless gentry; men whose fathers lay upon down couches,
and whose selves sleep upon the like of that;" and the rude settle
rocked as his hand shook it. "Out upon your Glorious Times, say I; you
might as well call the drunken scene of a dinner-party a picture of
domestic comfort and happiness! It was a long night of debauchery, and
this that we now see is the sad morning afterwards! Do you know besides,
sir," continued he, in a still fiercer tone, "that in those same
'Glorious Times,' you, and others of your stamp, would have been baited
like badgers if found within the precincts of a gentleman's house? Ay,
faith, and if my memory does not betray me, I can call to mind one or
two such instances."

The