road, Captain Jackson." The
name and attribution are common enough; but a feeling like reproach
persuades me, that this could have been no other in fact than my dear
old friend, who some five-and-twenty years ago rented a tenement,
which he was pleased to dignify with the appellation here used, about
a mile from Westbourn Green. Alack, how good men, and the good turns
they do us, slide out of memory, and are recalled but by the surprise
of some such sad memento as that which now lies before us!

He whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer, with a wife and two
grown-up daughters, whom he maintained with the port and notions of
gentlewomen upon that slender professional allowance. Comely girls
they were too.

And was I in danger of forgetting this man?--his cheerful suppers--the
noble tone of hospitality, when first you set your foot in the
_cottage_--the anxious ministerings about you, where little or
nothing (God knows) was to be ministered.--Althea's horn in a poor
platter--the power of self-enchantment, by which, in his magnificent
wishes to entertain you, he multiplied his means to bounties.

You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what seemed a bare scrag--cold
savings from the foregone meal--remnant hardly sufficient to send
a mendicant from the door contented. But in the copious will--the
revelling imagination of your host--the "mind, the mind, Master
Shallow," whole beeves were spread before you--hecatombs--no end
appeared to the profusion.

It was the widow's cruse--the loaves and fishes; carving could not
lessen nor helping diminish it--the stamina were left--the elemental
bone still flourished, divested of its accidents.

"Let us live while we can," methinks I hear the open-handed creature
exclaim; "while we have, let us not want," "here is plenty left;"
"want for nothing"--with many more such hospitable sayings, the
spurs of appetite, and old concomitants of smoaking boards, and
feast-oppressed chargers. Then sliding a slender ratio of Single
Gloucester upon his wife's plate, or the daughter's, he would convey
the remanent rind into his own, with a merry quirk of "the nearer the
bone," &c., and declaring that he universally preferred the outside.
For we had our table distinctions, you are to know, and some of us in
a manner sate above the salt. None but his guest or guests dreamed of
tasting flesh luxuries at night, the fragments were _vere hospilibus
sacra_. But of one thing or another there was always