, his coat, his
snuff-box, his spectacles, and the other stocking, all lying on the
floor, together with a table, a chair, a candlestick, with a broken
candle, which had been knocked over;--the snuffers standing upright,
being sharp in the point, and having stuck in the deal floor.

It was a terrible business! and might have been a life-long lesson to
every one, of the truth of St Paul's maxim, that "evil communication
corrupts good manners;"--Cursecowl being the most incomprehensible fellow
that ever breathed the breath of life. To add to his calamities, James
found, on attempting to rise, that he had, in some way or other, of which
he had not a shadow of recollection, dismally sprained his left ankle,
which, to his consternation, was swelled like a door-post, and as blue as
his apron. There was also a black ugly lump on his brow, as big as a
pigeon's egg, which was horrible to look at in the bit glass. Many a
gallant soldier escaped from Waterloo with less scaith--and that they
did. Poor innocent sowl! I pitied him from the very bottom of my
heart--as who would not?

Having got an inkling of the town-talk by breakfast-time, and knowing
also that many a one--such is the corruption of human nature--would like
to have a hair in the neck of James, by taking up an evil report, I
remembered within myself that a friend in need is a friend indeed, and
cannily papped up the close, after I had got myself shaved, to see how
the land lay. And a humbling spectacle it was! James could scarcely yet
be said to be himself, for his eyes were like scored collops, and his
stomach was so sick that his face was like ill-bleached linen--pale as a
dishclout. When he tried to speak, it was between a bock and a hiccup
with him, and my feeling for his situation was such--knowing, as I did,
all the ins and outs of the business--that I could not help being very
wae for him. It therefore behoved me to make Nanse send him a cup of
well-made tea, to see if it would act as a settler, but his heart stood
at it, as if it had been 'cacuana, and do as he liked, he could not let a
drop of it down his craig. When the wife informed me of this, I at last
luckily remembered the old saying about giving one a hair of the dog that
bit him; and I made poor James swallow a thimbleful of malt spirits--the
real unadulterated creatur, with wonderfully good effects. Though then
in his sixty-first year, James declares on his honour as a gentleman,
that this