back at me, but
I was "cutting away" and watching from the extreme corner of my left eye
the victim and his charge, while I pressed hard upon the corn pile of my
friend's foot under the table.

At length, the victim thought he saw some one up the table waiting for
the plate, and quickly he whispered to his next neighbor--

"Please, sir, to-to-a, _just pass this plate up!_"

The man took the plate, and being more of a practical operator than his
neighbor, gave the plate over to _his_ next neighbor, with--

"Pass this plate up to that gentleman, if you please," dodging his head
towards an old gent in specs, who sat near the head of the table,
grinning a ghastly smile over the field of good things.

"It's _going!_"

"_What?_" says my friend.

"The plate; it's going the rounds; just you keep quiet, you'll see a
good thing."

The plate, at length, got to the head of the table. It was given to the
old gentleman in specs; he looked over the top of his specs very
deliberately at the "fodder," then back at the thin, pale,
student-looking youth who handed it to him, then up and down the table.
A raw-boned, gaunt and hollow-looking disciple caught the eye of the old
gent; he must be the man who wanted the "load." His lips quacked as if
in the act of--"pass this plate, sir,"--to his next neighbor; he was too
far off for us to _hear_ his discourse. Well, the plate came booming
along down the opposite side; the tall man declined it and gave it over
to his next neighbor, who seemed a little tempted to take hold of the
invoice, but just then it occurred to him, probably, that he was keeping
_somebody_ (!) out of his grub, so he quickly turned to his neighbor and
passed the plate. One or two more moves brought the plate within our
range, and there it liked to have _stuck_, for a fussy old Englishman,
in whom politeness did not stick out very prominently, grunted--

"I don't want it, sir."

"Well, but, sir, please _pass it_," says the last victim, beseechingly
holding out the plate.

"Pass it? Here, mister, 's your plate," says Bull, at length reluctantly
seizing on the plate, and rushing it on to his next neighbor, who
started--

"Not mine, sir."

"Not yours! Who does it belong to? Pass it down to somebody."

Off went the plate again. Several ladies turned up their pretty eyes and
noses while the gents _passed it_ by them.

"Why, if there ain't that plate a going the rounds, that you gave me!"
says my next neighbor,