said) were vast favourites with
the old gentleman, and strenuously did he endeavour to initiate us in the
art of drinking, recounting the feats of his youth, and his
drinking-bouts with my father, adding, with a smile, "But you'll never be
a par with, your Uncle, Ned, till you can carry the six bottles under
your waistcoat."

My head was certainly stronger than my Cousin's; he went as far as the
third bottle--the next drop was on the floor! Now I did once manage the
fourth bottle--but then--I must confess I was obliged to give it up!

"Young men," would my Uncle say, "should practice 'sans intermission,'
until they can drink four bottles without being flustered, then they will
be sober people; for it won't be easy to make them tipsy--a drunken man I
abominate!"

EXAMPLE.

"You see I make no splash!"

There are some individuals so inflated with self-sufficiency, and
entertain such an overweaning opinion of their skill in all matters, that
they must needs have a finger in every pie.

Perhaps a finer specimen than old V____, of this genius of egotistic,
meddling mortals, never existed. He was a man well-to-do in the world,
and possessed not only a large fortune, but a large family.

He had an idea that no man was better qualified to bring up his children
in the way they should go; and eternally plagued the obsequious tutors of
his sons with his novel mode of instilling the rudiments of the Latin
tongue, although he knew not a word of the language; and the obedient
mistresses of his daughters with his short road to attaining a perfection
in playing the piano-forte, without knowing a note of the gamut: but what
could they say; why, nothing more or less than they were 'astonished;'
which was vague enough to be as true as it was flattering.

And then he was so universally clever, that he even interfered in the
culinary department of his household, instructing the red-elbowed,
greasy, grinning Cook, in the sublime art of drawing, stuffing, and
roasting a goose, for which she certainly did not fail to roast the goose
(her master) when she escaped to the regions below.

Even his medical attendant was compelled to acknowledge the efficacy of
his domestic prescriptions of water-gruel and honey in catarrhs, and
roasted onions in ear-aches, and sundry other simple appliances; and, in
fine, found himself, on most occasions, rather a 'consulting surgeon,'
than an apothecary, for he was compelled to yield to the man