and shares his happiness
with his messmates. You slily give the alarm to the street, and in a
minute there is poking in at the tent door and overhanging the festive
party a struggling crowd of hands, each bearing in its fingers a hard
tack, or fragment thereof, clamorous to be buttered. You return to your
tent roaring with laughter, and subsequently observe that your dismayed
neighbour is spared the trouble of returning the crock to the cellar!
The same cruel fate awaits a crock of milk which he was lucky enough to
get of the old woman under the hill, but so impolitic as to expose in
broad daylight on the company parade. His wine--for it is evident there
is something of the sort in reserve,--he resolves--so you infer,--to
manage more astutely. Accordingly in the sly of the evening, the flaps
of his tent closely drawn, though not so closely as to keep out a
mischievous eye, the stump of a tallow candle shedding a forlorn,
nebulous light on the assembled mess, he draws forth a bottle of fine
old sherry. It is not long before sounds of merriment, of singing and
shouting and laughter, betoken an unusual cause of excitement within
that tent. There begins to be a movement among outsiders, and you
proceed presently to make an investigation. You peep in; another joins
you; then another; and soon there is a crowd. All make themselves at
once quite at home, sitting down on the edge of the tent, on each
other, on the ground, anywhere. The master of the feast is by this time
overflowing with the milk--the wine rather--of human kindness. He feels
no dismay now at the sight of his uninvited guests, but greets them
with cordial and good humored welcome, not noticing in his mellow mood,
as you do, coolly surveying matters, that another of the aforesaid
laughs will come in presently. His self-love all a-glow with
satisfaction, he offers you a "glass of wine," (in a tin cup). You take
the bottle also, and pass it around. He makes absurd speeches at which
he laughs with boisterous glee, and at which you laugh too, and all
laugh. He sings absurd medleys for which you improvise absurd choruses
which make things go along as pleasantly as possible. Meanwhile the
bottle is returned empty. He takes it, insists upon re-filling your
"glass" from it, and tips it up over your cup. Then with a comical leer
at you at the idea of attempting to pour wine from an empty bottle, he
turns, dives into his cellar and fishes up another. You bid him go on
with