more ale; turn up the light!'"

Giddings glanced at the electric light-fixtures, and then looked about
as if for a servant to turn them up.

"'I will not go to bed to-night!
For, of all foes that man should dread,
The first and worst one is a bed!
Friends I have had, both old and young;
Ale have we drunk, and songs we've sung.
Enough you know when this is said,
That, one and all, they died in bed!'"

Here Giddings's voice broke with grief, and he stopped to drink the rest
of the glassful, and went on:

"'In bed they died, and I'll not go
Where all my friends have perished so!
Go, ye who fain would buried be;
But not to-night a bed for me!'"

"Do you often have these Horatian fits?" I inquired.

"Base groveler!" said he, "if you can't rise to the level of the
occasion, don't butt in."

"'For me to-night no bed prepare,
But set me out my oaken chair,
And bid me other guests beside
The ghosts that shall around me glide!'"

"You will, of course," said Cornish, "permit us to withdraw for the
purpose of having our conference with our Eastern friends? If I take
your meaning, you'll not be alone."

"Not by a jugful, I'll not be alone!" said Giddings, tossing off another
glass:

"'In curling smoke-wreaths I shall see
A fair and gentle company.
Though silent all, fair revelers they,
Who leave you not till break of day!
Go, ye who would not daylight see;
But not to-night a bed for me!
For I've been born, and I've been wed,
And all man's troubles come of bed!'"

Here Giddings sank down in his chair and began weeping.

"The divinest attribute of poetry," said he, "is that of bringing tears.
Let me weep awhile, fellows, and then I'll give you the last stanza.
Last stanza's the best--"

And in the midst of his critique he went to sleep, thereby breaking his
rule adopted in "_Dum Vivemus Vigilemus_."

"Is he this way often?" said I to Cornish, as we went down to meet Jim
and the bankers.

"Pretty often," said Cornish. "I don't know how I'd amuse my evenings if
it weren't for Giddings. He's too far gone to-night, though, to be
entertaining. Gets worse, I think, as the wedding-day approaches. Trying
to drown his apprehensions, I suspect. Funny fellow, Giddings. But he's
all right from noon to nine P.M."

"I think we'll have to organize a dipsomaniacs' hospital for our crowd,"
said I, "if things keep going on as they ar