my feet and
only then remembered how unfit I was to follow up the search, as tables,
chairs, lights, and people seemed all rocking and waving before me.
However, I succeeded in making my way, through one room into another,
sometimes guiding my steps along the walls; and once, as I recollect,
seeking the diagonal of a room, I bisected a quadrille with such
ill-directed speed, as to run foul of a Cork dandy and his partner who
were just performing the "en avant:" but though I saw them lie tumbled
in the dust by the shock of my encounter--for I had upset them--I still
held on the even tenor of my way. In fact, I had feeling for but one
loss; and, still in pursuit of my cane, I reached the hall-door. Now,
be it known that the architecture of the Cork Mansion House has but one
fault, but that fault is a grand one, and a strong evidence of how
unsuited English architects are to provide buildings for a people whose
tastes and habits they but imperfectly understand--be it known, then,
that the descent from the hall-door to the street was by a flight of
twelve stone steps. How I should ever get down these was now my
difficulty. If Falstaff deplored "eight yards of uneven ground as being
three score and ten miles a foot," with equal truth did I feel that
these twelve awful steps were worse to me than would be M'Gillicuddy
Reeks in the day-light, and with a head clear from champagne.

While I yet hesitated, the problem resolved itself; for, gazing down upon
the bright gravel, brilliantly lighted by the surrounding lamps, I lost
my balance, and came tumbling and rolling from top to bottom, where I
fell upon a large mass of some soft substance, to which, in all
probability, I owe my life. In a few seconds I recovered my senses, and
what was my surprise to find that the downy cushion beneath, snored most
audibly! I moved a little to one side, and then discovered that in
reality it was nothing less than an alderman of Cork, who, from his
position, I concluded had shared the same fate with myself; there he lay,
"like a warrior taking his rest," but not with his "martial cloak around
him," but a much more comfortable and far more costly robe--a scarlet
gown of office--with huge velvet cuffs and a great cape of the same
material. True courage consists in presence of mind; and here mine came
to my aid at once: recollecting the loss I had just sustained, and
perceiving that all was still about me, with that right Peninsular maxim,