ncur the reproach of stinginess.

"Never mind, take mine," said he, as he dropped a very weighty purse
into my coat-pocket, and moved away before I could make any answer.

Perhaps the greatest flattery an individual can receive is to win some
acknowledgment of confidence from an utter stranger. To know that by the
chance intercourse of a few minutes you have so impressed another, who
never saw you before, that he is impelled at once to befriend you,
your self-esteem, so pleasantly gratified, immediately re-acts upon
the cause, and you are at a loss whether most to applaud your own
good gifts, or the ready wittedness of him who appreciated them so
instantaneously.

I was still hesitating, revolving, doubtless, the pleasant sense of
flattery aforesaid, when Falkoner came flying past with his partner.
"Order supper for four," cried he, as he whizzed by.

"What does he say, mon cher Comte?" said my partner.

I translated his command, and found that the notion pleased her vastly.

The dining-room by this time had been metamorphosed into a kind of
coffee-room, with small supper-tables, at which parties were already
assembling; and here we now took our places, to con over the bill of
fare, and discuss scalloped oysters, cold lobster, devilled haddock, and
other like delicacies.

Falkoner soon joined us, and we sat down, the merriest knot in the room.
I must have been brilliant! I feel it so, this hour; a kind of warm glow
rushes to my cheeks as I think over that evening, and how the guests
from the different parts of the room drew gradually nearer and nearer to
listen to the converse at our table, and hear the smart things that came
pattering down like hail! What pressing invitations came pouring in
upon me! The great Mastodon himself could not have eaten a tithe of
the breakfasts to which I was asked, nor would the grog-tub of a
seventy-four contain all the rum-and-water I was proffered by skippers
lying "in dock."

Falkoner, however, pleased me more than the rest. There was something in
his cordiality that did not seem like a passing fancy; and I could not
help feeling that however corrupted and run to waste by dissipation,
there was good stuff about him. He interested me, too, on another score:
he had formerly made one of a Texan excursion that had penetrated even
to the Rio del Norte, and his escapes and adventures amused me highly.
The ladies, I believe, at last found us very ungallant cavaliers; for
they arose,