y brain, much walking wearied
my--well, it seems to be more my eyes!"

"You have walked far, I dare say?" I suggested.

"Not so much far as often," he replied. "There is in this city--to
which, I think, you are a stranger? Sir, to your very good health and
our better acquaintance!--there is, in this city of Dunedin, a certain
implication of streets which reflects the utmost credit on the designer
and the publicans--at every hundred yards is seated the Judicious
Tavern, so that persons of contemplative mind are secure, at moderate
distances, of refreshment. I have been doing a trot in that favoured
quarter, favoured by art and nature. A few chosen comrades--enemies of
publicity and friends to wit and wine--obliged me with their society.
'Along the cool, sequestered vale of Register Street we kept the uneven
tenor of our way,' sir."

"It struck me, as you came in----" I began.

"O, don't make any bones about it!" he interrupted. "Of course it struck
you! and let me tell you I was devilish lucky not to strike myself. When
I entered this apartment I shone 'with all the pomp and prodigality of
brandy and water,' as the poet Gray has in another place expressed it.
Powerful bard, Gray! but a niminy-piminy creature, afraid of a petticoat
and a bottle--not a man, sir, not a man! Excuse me for being so
troublesome, but what the devil have I done with my fork? Thank you, I
am sure. _Temulentia, quoad me ipsum, brevis calligo est._ I sit and
eat, sir, in a London fog. I should bring a link-boy to table with me;
and I would too, if the little brutes were only washed! I intend to
found a Philanthropical Society for Washing the Deserving Poor and
Shaving Soldiers. I am pleased to observe that, although not of an
unmilitary bearing, you are apparently shaved. In my calendar of the
virtues shaving comes next to drinking. A gentleman may be a low-minded
ruffian without sixpence, but he will always be close shaved. See me,
with the eye of fancy, in the chill hours of the morning--say about a
quarter to twelve, noon--see me awake! First thing of all, without one
thought of the plausible but unsatisfactory small beer, or the healthful
though insipid soda-water, I take the deadly razor in my vacillating
grasp; I proceed to skate upon the margin of eternity. Stimulating
thought! I bleed, perhaps, but with medicable wounds. The stubble
reaped, I pass out of my chamber, calm but triumphant. To employ a
hackneyed phrase, I would not call Lor