A STORY WITHOUT A TAIL.

BY WILLIAM MAGINN, LL.D.

[_MAGA._ APRIL 1834.]

CHAPTER I.

HOW WE WENT TO DINE AT JACK GINGER'S.

So it was finally agreed upon that we should dine at Jack Ginger's
chambers in the Temple, seated in a lofty story in Essex Court. There
was, besides our host, Tom Meggot, Joe Macgillicuddy, Humpy Harlow, Bob
Burke, Antony Harrison, and myself. As Jack Ginger had little coin and
no credit, we contributed each our share to the dinner. He himself
provided room, fire, candle, tables, chairs, tablecloth, napkins--no,
not napkins; on second thoughts we did not bother ourselves with
napkins--plates, dishes, knives, forks, spoons (which he borrowed
from the wig-maker), tumblers, lemons, sugar, water, glasses,
decanters--by the by, I am not sure that there were decanters--salt,
pepper, vinegar, mustard, bread, butter (plain and melted), cheese,
radishes, potatoes, and cookery. Tom Meggot was a cod's head and
shoulders, and oysters to match--Joe Macgillicuddy, a boiled leg of
pork, with pease-pudding--Humpy Harlow, a sirloin of beef roast, with
horse-radish--Bob Burke, a gallon of half-and-half, and four bottles of
whisky, of prime quality ("Potteen," wrote the Whiskyman, "I say, by
Jupiter, but of which _many_-facture _He_ alone knows")--Antony
Harrison, half-a-dozen of port, he having tick to that extent at some
unfortunate wine-merchant's--and I supplied cigars _a discretion_, and a
bottle of rum, which I borrowed from a West Indian friend of mine as I
passed by. So that, on the whole, we were in no danger of suffering from
any of the extremes of hunger and thirst for the course of that evening.

We met at five o'clock--_sharp_--and very sharp. Not a man was missing
when the clock of the Inner Temple struck the last stroke. Jack Ginger
had done everything to admiration. Nothing could be more splendid than
his turn-out. He had superintended the cooking himself of every
individual dish with his own eyes--or rather eye--he having but one, the
other having been lost in a skirmish when he was midshipman on board a
pirate in the Brazilian service. "Ah!" said Jack, often and often,
"these were my honest days. Gad! did I ever think when I was a pirate
that I was at the end to turn rogue, and study the law!"--All was
accurate to the utmost degree. The tablecloth, to be sure, was not
exactly white, but it had been washed last week, and the collection of
the plates was miscellaneous, exhibiting sever