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quantities of BULMER's ale, almost simultaneously, and the result was that, in a very short time, BULMER might have rolled in money if he had felt disposed--as, to do him justice, he never did--to render himself ridiculous. Now what is there in the fact that BULMER has made a fortune in beer that should inflate him to so insufferable an extent? Can it be that there is some mysterious property in the liquid itself, some property which, having escaped even the careful investigation of the analytical chemists, has pervaded the being of BULMER, and has induced him to patronise the inhabited world? I thought so once. Indeed I have lost myself in conjectures on this point. But I now know that BULMER has fallen under your sway, and that you, my dear POMPOSITY, direct his every movement, and inspire his every thought. Now, the other night, when, as I say, I was dining at his table, BULMER was in one of his most glorious and vain-glorious moods. Patronage radiated from him upon my humble self and the rest of the tribe of undoubted inferiors whom he permitted to bask in his shining presence. "My dear boy," said BULMER to me, while he inserted his thumbs in the arm-openings of his waistcoats, and drummed an approving tattoo upon his shining shirt-front, "my dear boy, I have always been your friend, and nobody knows it better than you. Many a time have I proved it to you, and I can honestly assure you that nothing gives me greater pleasure than to welcome you in person to my humble home." I thanked the great man deferentially, and assured him I was deeply sensible of his many kindnesses. But after he had turned away, some malicious spirit prompted me, in spite of myself, to reflect upon the favours that BULMER has conferred upon me. Were they, after all, so numerous and so great? Was I, on the whole, so poor a worm as he imagined me to be? Had he in fact made me what I am? These ungrateful thoughts chased one another through my perplexed brain, and I was forced to acknowledge to myself that at the various crises of my career the fairy form of BULMER had been absent. Yet BULMER is firmly convinced that I owe any modest success I may have attained and all my annual income to his beneficent efforts on my behalf. And the worst of it is, that he has a kind of top-heavy and overwhelming good-nature about him. He honestly means to be kind and genial where he only succeeds in irritating his perverse acquaintances. Was BULMER always thu
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