take
a cruise, less for profit than pleasure. The blue water is a necessary
of life to the man that has been some years at sea. My little collection
has been made in my wanderings; and if ever you come to Naples, you must
visit a cottage I have at Castella Mare, where you 'll see something
better worth your looking at. And now, though it does not seem very
hospitable, I must say adieu.'

With these words Mr. O'Kelly opened a drawer, and drew forth a blue
jacket lined with rich dark fur and slashed with black braiding; a
greyhound was embroidered in gold twist on the arm, and a similar
decoration ornamented the front of his blue-cloth cap. I start for Genoa
in half an hour. We'll meet again, and often, I hope.'

'Good-bye,' said I, 'and a hundred thanks for a pleasant evening, and
one of the strangest stories I ever heard. I half wish I were a younger
man, and I think I 'd mount the blue jacket too.'

'It would show you some strange scenes,' said Mr. O'Kelly, while he
continued to equip himself for the road. 'All I have told is little
compared to what I might tell, were I only to give a few leaves of my
life _en courier_; but, as I said before, we 'll live to meet again. Do
you know who my party is this morning?'

'I can't guess.'

'My old flame, Miss Blundell; she's married now and has a daughter, so
like what I remember herself once. Well, well, it's a strange world!
Good-bye.'

With that we shook hands for the last time, and parted; and I wandered
back to Antwerp when the sun was rising, to get into a bed and sleep for
the next eight hours.

CHAPTER IX. TABLE-TRAITS

Morgan O'Dogherty was wrong--and, sooth to say, he was not often
so--when he pronounced a Mess to be 'the perfection of dinner society.'
In the first place, there can be no perfection anywhere or in anything,
it is evident, where ladies are not. Secondly, a number of persons so
purely professional, and therefore so very much alike in their habits,
tone of thinking, and expression, can scarcely be expected to make up
that complex amalgam so indispensable to pleasant society. Lastly, the
very fact of meeting the same people each day, looking the very same
way too, is a sad damper to that flow of spirits which for their free
current demand all the chances and vicissitudes of a fresh audience.
In a word, in the one case a man becomes like a Dutch canal, standing
stagnant and slow between its trim banks; in the other, he is a bounding
rivulet,