piminy creature, afraid of a petticoat and a bottle - not a man, sir, not a man! Excuse me for being so troublesome, but what the devil have I done with my fork? Thank you, I am sure.TEMULENTIA, QUOAD ME IPSUM, BREVIS COLLIGO EST.I sit and eat, sir, in a London fog.I should bring a link-boy to table with me; and I would too, if the little brutes were only washed! I intend to found a Philanthropical Society for Washing the Deserving Poor and Shaving Soldiers.I am pleased to observe that, although not of an unmilitary bearing, you are apparently shaved.In my calendar of the virtues shaving comes next to drinking.A gentleman may be a low-minded ruffian without sixpence, but he will always be close shaved.See me, with the eye of fancy, in the chill hours of the morning, say about a quarter to twelve, noon - see me awake! First thing of all, without one thought of the plausible but unsatisfactory small beer, or the healthful though insipid soda-
water, I take the deadly razor in my vacillating grasp; I proceed to skate upon the margin of eternity.Stimulating thought! I bleed, perhaps, but with medicable wounds.The stubble reaped, I pass out of my chamber, calm but triumphant.To employ a hackneyed phrase, I would not call Lord Wellington my uncle! I, too, have dared, perhaps bled, before the imminent deadly shaving-table.'
In this manner the bombastic fellow continued to entertain me all through dinner, and by a common error of drunkards, because he had been extremely talkative himself, leaped to the conclusion that he had chanced on very genial company.He told me his name, his address; he begged we should meet again; finally he proposed that I should dine with him in the country at an early date.
'The dinner is official,' he explained.'The office-bearers and Senatus of the University of Cramond - an educational institution in which I have the honour to be Professor of Nonsense - meet to do honour to our friend Icarus, at the old-established HOWFF, Cramond Bridge.One place is vacant, fascinating stranger, - I offer it to you!'
'And who is your friend Icarus?' I asked, 'The aspiring son of Daedalus!' said he.'Is it possible that you have never heard the name of Byfield?'
'Possible and true,' said I.
'And is fame so small a thing?' cried he.'Byfield, sir, is an aeronaut.He apes the fame of a Lunardi, and is on the point of offering to the inhabitants - I beg your pardon, to the nobility and gentry of our neighbourhood - the spectacle of an ascension.
As one of the gentry concerned I may be permitted to remark that I am unmoved.I care not a Tinker's Damn for his ascension.No more - I breathe it in your ear - does anybody else.The business is stale, sir, stale.Lunardi did it, and overdid it.A whimsical, fiddling, vain fellow, by all accounts - for I was at that time rocking in my cradle.But once was enough.If Lunardi went up and came down, there was the matter settled.We prefer to grant the point.We do not want to see the experiment repeated AD NAUSEAM by Byfield, and Brown, and Butler, and Brodie, and Bottomley.Ah! if they would go up and NOT come down again! But this is by the question.The University of Cramond delights to honour merit in the man, sir, rather than utility in the profession; and Byfield, though an ignorant dog, is a sound reliable drinker, and really not amiss over his cups.Under the radiance of the kindly jar partiality might even credit him with wit.'
It will be seen afterwards that this was more my business than I thought it at the time.Indeed, I was impatient to be gone.Even as my friend maundered ahead a squall burst, the jaws of the rain were opened against the coffee-house windows, and at that inclement signal I remembered I was due elsewhere.