ch-bowl stood in the centre of the table, rich, smoking, and crowned
with a concoction of unprecedented strength. Hazlet was quite in his
glory. When they had plied him sufficiently--which Bruce took care to
do by repeatedly replenishing his cup on the sly, so that he might fancy
himself to have taken much less than was really the case--they all drank
his health with the usual honours:

"For he's a jolly good fe-el-low.
For he's a jolly good fe-el-low,
For he's a jolly good fe-el-l-ow--
Which nobody can deny,
Which nobody can deny;
For he's a jolly good fe-el-low," etcetera.

And so on, _ad infinitum_, followed by "Hip! hip! hip! hurrah! hurrah!!
hurrah!!!" and then the general rattling of plates on the table, and
breaking of wine-glass stems with knives of "boys who crashed the glass
and beat the floor."

Hazlet was quite in the seventh heaven of exaltation, and made a feeble
attempt at replying to the honour in a speech; but he was in so very
oblivious and generally foolish a condition, that, being chiefly
accustomed to Philadelphus oratory, he began to address them as "My
Christian Friends;" and this produced such shouts of boisterous
laughter, that he sat down with his purpose unaccomplished.

Before the evening was over, Bruce, in the opinion of all present,
including Fitzurse himself, had fairly won his bet.

"I shan't mind p-p-paying a bit," said the excellent young nobleman;
"it's been such r-r-rare f-f-fun."

Rare fun indeed! The miserable Hazlet, swilled with unwonted draughts,
lay brutally comatose in a chair. His head rolled from side to side,
his body and arms hung helpless and disjointed, his eyelids dropped--he
was completely unconscious, and more than fulfilled the conditions of
being "roaring drunk!"

Now for some jolly amusement--the opportunity's too good to be lost!
What exhilaration there is on seeing a human soul imbruted and
grovelling hopelessly in the dirt or rather to have a body before you,
_without_ a soul for the time being--a coarse animal mass, swinish as
those whom the wand of Circe smote, but with the human intelligence
quenched besides, and the charactery of reason wiped away. Here, some
ochre and lamp-black, quick! There--plaster it well about the whiskers
and eyelids, and put a few patches on the hair! Magnificent!--he looks
like a Choctaw in his war-paint, after drinking fire-water.

Screams of irrepressible laughter--almost as ghastly, (if the cause of