at them across the table."

"Hobnobbing wastes time," said Jack Ginger, laying down the pot out of
which he had been drinking for the last few minutes; "and, besides, it
is not customary now in genteel society--so pass the bottle about."

[I here pause in my narrative to state, on more accurate recollection,
that we had not decanters; we drank from the black bottle, which Jack
declared was according to the fashion of the Continent.]

So the port was passed round, and declared to be superb. Antony Harrison
received the unanimous applause of the company; and, if he did not blush
at all the fine things that were said in his favour, it was because his
countenance was of that peculiar hue that no addition of red could be
visible upon it. A blush on Antony's face would be like gilding refined
gold.

Whether cheese is prohibited or not in the higher circles of the West
End, I cannot tell; but I know it was not prohibited in the very highest
chambers of the Temple.

"It's double Gloucester," said Jack Ginger; "prime, bought at the
corner--Heaven pay the cheesemonger, for I shan't--but, as he is a
gentleman, I give you his health."

"I don't think," said Joe Macgillicuddy, "that I ought to demean myself
to drink the health of a cheesemonger; but I'll not stop the bottle."

And, to do Joe justice, he did not. Then we attacked the cheese, and in
an incredibly short period we battered in a breach of an angle of 45
degrees, in a manner that would have done honour to any engineer that
directed the guns at San Sebastian. The cheese, which on its first entry
on the table presented the appearance of a plain circle, was soon made
to exhibit a very different shape, as may be understood by the subjoined
diagram:--

[Illustration]

[A, original cheese; EBD, cheese after five minutes standing on the
table; EBC, angle of 45 deg.]

With cheese came, and with cheese went, celery. It is unnecessary to
repeat what a number of puns were made on that most pun-provoking of
plants.

"Clear the decks," said Jack Ginger to Jerry Gallagher. "Gentlemen, I
did not think of getting pastry, or puddings, or dessert, or ices, or
jellies, or blancmange, or anything of the sort, for men of sense like
you."

We all unanimously expressed our indignation at being supposed even for
a moment guilty of any such weakness; but a general suspicion seemed to
arise among us that a dram might not be rejected with the same marked
scorn. Jack Ginger according