n with applause. There was, indeed, but one
small cloud on this red-letter day. I had laid in a large supply of
the national beverage, in the shape of The "Rob Roy MacGregor O" Blend,
Warranted Old and Vatted; and this must certainly have been a generous
spirit, for I had some anxious work between four and half-past,
conveying on board the inanimate forms of chieftains.

To one of our ordinary festivities, where he was the life and soul of
his own mess, Pinkerton himself came incognito, bringing the algebraist
on his arm. Miss Mamie proved to be a well-enough-looking mouse, with
a large, limpid eye, very good manners, and a flow of the most correct
expressions I have ever heard upon the human lip. As Pinkerton's
incognito was strict, I had little opportunity to cultivate the lady's
acquaintance; but I was informed afterwards that she considered me "the
wittiest gentleman she had ever met." "The Lord mend your taste in wit!"
thought I; but I cannot conceal that such was the general impression.
One of my pleasantries even went the round of San Francisco, and I have
heard it (myself all unknown) bandied in saloons. To be unknown began at
last to be a rare experience; a bustle woke upon my passage; above all,
in humble neighbourhoods. "Who's that?" one would ask, and the other
would cry, "That! Why, Dromedary Dodd!" or, with withering scorn, "Not
know Mr. Dodd of the Picnics? Well!" and indeed I think it marked a
rather barren destiny; for our picnics, if a trifle vulgar, were as gay
and innocent as the age of gold; I am sure no people divert themselves
so easily and so well: and even with the cares of my stewardship, I was
often happy to be there.

Indeed, there were but two drawbacks in the least considerable. The
first was my terror of the hobbledehoy girls, to whom (from the demands
of my situation) I was obliged to lay myself so open. The other, if less
momentous, was more mortifying. In early days, at my mother's knee, as a
man may say, I had acquired the unenviable accomplishment (which I have
never since been able to lose) of singing _Just before the Battle._
I have what the French call a fillet of voice, my best notes scarce
audible about a dinner-table, and the upper register rather to be
regarded as a higher power of silence: experts tell me besides that
I sing flat; nor, if I were the best singer in the world, does _Just
before the Battle_ occur to my mature taste as the song that I would
choose to sing. In spi