his friend and
publisher, Moxon, lest H.R.H. should be scandalized). And now everybody
was on tiptoe for the author of "Bracebridge Hall." If his speech had
been proportioned to the cheers which greeted him, it would have been
the longest of the evening. When, therefore, he simply said, in his
modest, beseeching manner, "I beg to return you my very sincere thanks,"
his brevity seemed almost ungracious to those who didn't know that it
was physically impossible for him to make a speech. It was vexatious
that routine had omitted from the list of speakers Mr. Everett, who
was at Irving's side; but, as diplomate, the Prussian and Russian
had precedence, and as American author, Irving, of course, was
the representative man. An Englishman near me said to his
neighbor,--"Brief?" "Yes, but you can tell the _gentleman_ in the very
tone of his voice."

In the hat-room I was amused to see "little Tom Moore" in the crowd,
appealing, with mock-pathos, to Irving, as the biggest man, to pass his
ticket, lest he should be demolished in the crush. They left the hall
together to encounter a heavy shower; and Moore, in his "Diary," tells
the following further incident.

"The best thing of the evening (as far as I was concerned) occurred
after the whole grand show was over. Irving and I came away together,
and we had hardly got into the street, when a most pelting shower came
on, and cabs and umbrellas were in requisition in all directions. As
we were provided with neither, our plight was becoming serious, when a
common cad ran up to me, and said,--'Shall I get you a cab, Mr. Moore?
Sure, a'n't I the man that patronizes your Melodies?' He then ran off in
search of a vehicle, while Irving and I stood close up, like a pair of
male caryatides, under the very narrow protection of a hall-door ledge,
and thought, at last, that we were quite forgotten by my patron. But
he came faithfully back, and while putting me into the cab, (without
minding at all the trifle I gave him for his trouble,) he said
confidentially in my ear,--'Now mind, whenever you want a cab, Misthur
Moore, just call for Tim Flaherty, and I'm your man.'--Now, this I call
_fame_, and of somewhat more agreeable kind than that of Dante, when
the women in the street found him out by the marks of hell-fire on his
beard."

When I said that Mr. Irving could not speak in public, I had forgotten
that he did once get through with a very nice little speech on such an
occasion as that j