d Wellington my uncle! I, too,
have dared, perhaps bled, before the imminent deadly shaving-table."

In this manner the bombastic fellow continued to entertain me all
through dinner, and by a common error of drunkards, because he had been
extremely talkative himself, leaped to the conclusion that he had
chanced on very genial company. He told me his name, his address; he
begged we should meet again; finally he proposed that I should dine with
him in the country at an early date.

"The dinner is official," he explained. "The office-bearers and Senatus
of the University of Cramond--an educational institution in which I have
the honour to be Professor of Nonsense--meet to do honour to our friend
Icarus, at the old-established _howff_, Cramond Bridge. One place is
vacant, fascinating stranger--I offer it to you!"

"And who is your friend Icarus?" I asked.

"The aspiring son of Daedalus!" said he. "Is it possible that you have
never heard the name of Byfield?"

"Possible and true," said I.

"And is fame so small a thing?" cried he. "Byfield, sir, is an aeronaut.
He apes the fame of a Lunardi, and is on the point of offering to the
inhabitants--I beg your pardon, to the nobility and gentry of our
neighbourhood--the spectacle of an ascension. As one of the gentry
concerned, I may be permitted to remark that I am unmoved. I care not a
Tinker's Damn for his ascension. No more--I breathe in your ear--does
anybody else. The business is stale, sir, stale. Lunardi did it, and
overdid it. A whimsical, fiddling, vain fellow, by all accounts--for I
was at that time rocking in my cradle. But once was enough. If Lunardi
went up and came down, there was the matter settled. We prefer to grant
the point. We do not want to see the experiment repeated _ad nauseam_ by
Byfield, and Brown, and Butler, and Brodie, and Bottomley. Ah! if they
would go up and _not_ come down again! But this is by the question. The
University of Cramond delights to honour merit in the man, sir, rather
than utility in the profession; and Byfield, though an ignorant dog, is
a sound, reliable drinker, and really not amiss over his cups. Under the
radiance of the kindly jar partiality might even credit him with wit."

It will be seen afterwards that this was more my business than I thought
it at the time. Indeed, I was impatient to be gone. Even as my friend
maundered ahead a squall burst, the jaws of the rain were opened against
the coffee-house windows, and at t