and two makes
four. And if on my passage home, I thought it made five, what matter?
Two and two will just make four, as it always did, before I took the
finishing glass that did my business. My sister has begged me to write
an apology to Mrs. A. and you for disgracing your party; now it does
seem to me, that I rather honoured your party, for every one that was
not drunk (and one or two of the ladies, I am sure, were not) must have
been set off greatly in the contrast to me. I was the scapegoat. The
soberer they seemed. By the way is magnesia good on these occasions?
_iii_ pol: med: sum: ante noct: in rub: can:. I am no licentiate, but
know enough of simples to beg you to send me a draught after this model.
But still you'll say (or the men and maids at your house will say) that
it is not a seemly sight for an old gentleman to go home pick-a-back.
Well, may be it is not. But I have never studied grace. I take it to be
a mere superficial accomplishment. I regard more the internal
acquisitions. The great object after supper is to get home, and whether
that is obtained in a horizontal posture or perpendicular (as foolish
men and apes affect for dignity) I think is little to the purpose. The
end is always greater than the means. Here I am, able to compose a
sensible rational apology, and what signifies how I got here? I have
just sense enough to remember I was very happy last night, and to thank
our kind host and hostess, and that's sense enough, I hope.

CHARLES LAMB.

N.B.--What is good for a desperate head-ache? Why, Patience, and a
determination not to mind being miserable all day long. And that I have
made my mind up to.

So, here goes. It is better than not being alive at all, which I might
have been, had your man toppled me down at Lieut. Barker's Coal-shed. My
sister sends her sober compliments to Mrs. A. She is not much the worse.

Yours truly,

C. LAMB.

["Ariel." In two other of his letters, Lamb confesses similarly to a
similar escapade. And in his _Elia_ essay "Rejoicings on the New Year's
Coming of Age," he sends Ash Wednesday home in the same manner.

Lieut. John Barker, R.N., was a local character, a coal merchant and a
man with a grievance. He had thirteen children, some of whose names
probably greatly amused Lamb--John Thomas, William Charles, Frederick
Alexander, Marius Collins, Caius Marcius, Marcus Aurelius Antonius,
Coriolanus Aurelius, Horatius Tertius Decimus, Elizabeth Mary,
Concordia, Lou