ere shuddering at the blinds drawn down,
and huddling away from the mutes at the doors, and turning pale at the
funeral bells. And some, who had never thought twice before of their
latter end, now began to dwell with so much unction upon it, that
Providence graciously spared them the waste of perpetual preparation.

Among the rest, George Bowring had been scared, far more than he liked
to own, by the sudden death of his butcher, between half a dozen chops
for cutlets and the trimming of a wing-bone. George's own cook had gone
down with the order, and meant to bring it all back herself, because
she knew what butchers do when left to consider their subject. And Mrs.
Tompkins was so alarmed that she gave only six hours' notice to leave,
though her husband was far on the salt-sea wave, according to her own
account, and she had none to make her welcome except her father's second
wife. This broke up the household; and hence it was that George tempted
me so with the mountains.

For he took his wife and children to an old manor-house in Berkshire,
belonging to two maiden aunts of the lady, who promised to see to all
that might happen, but wanted no gentleman in the house at a period of
such delicacy. George Bowring, therefore, agreed to meet me on the 12th
day of September, at the inn in Reading--I forget its name--where the
Regulator coach (belonging to the old company, and leaving White Horse
Cellars at half-past nine in the morning) allowed an hour to dine, from
one o'clock onward, as the roads might be. And here I found him, and
we supped at Oxford, and did very well at the Mitre. On the following
morning we took coach for Shrewsbury, as we had agreed, and, reaching
the town before dark, put up at the Talbot Inn, and sauntered into the
dear old school, to see what the lads had been at since our time; for
their names and their exploits, at Oxford and Cambridge, are scored in
large letters upon the panels, from the year 1806 and onward, so that
soon there will be no place to register any more of them; and we found
that though we ourselves had done nothing, many fine fellows had been
instituted in letters of higher humanity, and were holding up the old
standard, so that we longed to invite them to dinner. But discipline
must be maintained; and that word means, more than anything else, the
difference of men's ages.

Now, at Shrewsbury, we had resolved to cast off all further heed of
coaches; and knowing the country pretty wel