han none at all--he was not a single-minded aspirant to our
social honours. The old marketing mother; to whom he owed his fortunes,
was in his blood to confound his ambition; and so contradictory was the
man's nature, that in revenge for disappointments, there were times when
he turned against the saving spirit of parsimony. Readers deep in Greek
dramatic writings will see the fatal Sisters behind the chair of a man
who gives frequent and bigger dinners, that he may become important in
his neighbourhood, while decreasing the price he pays for his wine, that
he may miserably indemnify himself for the outlay. A sip of his wine
fetched the breath, as when men are in the presence of the tremendous
elements of nature. It sounded the constitution more darkly-awful, and
with a profounder testimony to stubborn health, than the physician's
instruments. Most of the guests at Mr. Tinman's table were so
constructed that they admired him for its powerful quality the more at
his announcement of the price of it; the combined strength and cheapness
probably flattering them, as by another mystic instance of the national
energy. It must have been so, since his townsmen rejoiced to hail him as
head of their town. Here and there a solitary esquire, fished out of the
bathing season to dine at the house on the beach, was guilty of raising
one of those clamours concerning subsequent headaches, which spread
an evil reputation as a pall. A resident esquire or two, in whom a
reminiscence of Tinman's table may be likened to the hook which some old
trout has borne away from the angler as the most vivid of warnings to
him to beware for the future, caught up the black report and propagated
it.

The Lieutenant of the Coastguard, hearing the latest conscious victim,
or hearing of him, would nod his head and say he had never dined at
Tinman's table without a headache ensuing and a visit to the chemist's
shop; which, he was assured, was good for trade, and he acquiesced, as
it was right to do in a man devoted to his country. He dined with Tinman
again. We try our best to be social. For eight months in our year he
had little choice but to dine with Tinman or be a hermit attached to a
telescope.

"Where are you going, Lieutenant?" His frank reply to the question
was, "I am going to be killed;" and it grew notorious that this meant
Tinman's table. We get on together as well as we can. Perhaps if we
were an acutely calculating people we should find it pref