glass to his lips when my uncle cried, 'Old fellow, you're making a wry
face. Quite right, that isn't wine, it's vinegar. John, a better tap!'
And one kind after another came, French wines, Rhine wines, and still
the cry was, 'You don't care about that wine,' &c., till, when the
Cheshire cheese put the finishing stroke on things, the school-friend
jumped up from his chair in a fury. 'Dear old friend!' said my uncle
in the kindliest of tones, 'you are not at all like your usual self.
Come, as we are together here, let us crack a bottle of the real old
"care-killer."' The school-friend plumped into his chair again. The
hundred years' old Rhine wine pearled glorious and clear in the two
glasses which my uncle filled to the brim. 'The devil,' he cried, holding
his glass to the light, 'this wine has got muddy, on my hands. Don't
you see? No, no; I can't set that before anybody,' and he swallowed
the contents of both glasses himself, with evident delight. The
school-friend popped up again, and plumped into his chair once more on
my uncle's crying, 'John, Tokay!' The Tokay was brought, my uncle poured
it out, and handed the schoolfellow a glass, saying, 'There, my boy,
you shall be satisfied at last, in good earnest. That is nectar!' But
scarce had the school-friend set the glass to his lips when my uncle
cried, 'Thunder! there's been a cockroach at this bottle.' At this the
school-friend, in utter fury, dashed the glass into a thousand pieces
against the wall, ran out of the house like one possessed, and never
showed his face across the threshold again."

"With all respect for your uncle's grim humour," said Sylvester, "I
think there was rather a systematic perseverance in the course of
mystification involved in such a process of getting rid of a
troublesome person. I should have much preferred to show him the door
and have done with it; though I admit that it was quite according to
your uncle's peculiar vein of humour to prearrange a theatrical scene
of this sort in place of the perhaps troublesome and unpleasant
consequences which might have arisen if he had kicked him out. I can
vividly picture to myself the old parasite as he suffered the torments
of Tantalus, as your uncle kept continually awakening fresh hopes in
his mind and instantly dashing them to the ground; and how, at last,
utter desperation took possession of him."

"You can introduce the scene into your next comedy," said Theodore.

"It reminds me," said Vi