se?"

"Have a care, Mr. Dulberry: don't talk too loud. There's some of our
country friends outside, that, if they should overhear you, might take
a fancy for trying the strength of your head with ice-clods--or put you
under the pump."

"Or perhaps," said the manager, "give you a leek to eat; and not in so
courtly a manner as I once saw Fluellen administer his leek to Pistol
on the London boards; the part of Fluellen on that particular night by
Garrick; to whom, by the way, in _that_ part I was myself considered
equal."

"All rank superstition, trash, and mummery from the days of darkness
and barbarism," continued Dulberry. "And hence it comes that sound
principles make so little progress in Wales. As if we hadn't red-letter
days in the calendar more than enough already from national and general
superstition, but these local superstitions must step in to add
another. Gentlemen! it seems to me that Parliament should put a stop to
all bell-ringing, wearing of leeks, flaunting about with ribbons, and
flocking together in the street. Suppose, gentlemen, we should have an
Address prepared against leeks."

"No addresses," Mr. Dulberry, said the landlord, "for this day at any
rate! Sir Morgan Walladmor would send the beadle to you with a rod of
nettles, if he was to hear of such a thing: for he doats upon the leek
and St. David's day. This is one of his great jollification days: and
he sends bread, meat, drink, coals, and money, to every poor cottage
for a dozen miles round: nay, I may go farther and tell no lie: for
though the baronet's an old man now, and has had some sorrow to bear of
his own, by his good will there shouldn't be a sad heart in Machynleth
on St. David's day; and that's five and twenty long miles from Castle
Walladmor."

"Abominable despotism! and the poor oppressed creatures do actually
swallow his drink?"

"Swallow it? Aye, Mr. Dulberry, it's no physic."

"And they dance too, I suppose?"

"Every mother's child of them, Mr. Dulberry: not a soul but'll dance
to-day except babies and cripples. Lord! Mr. Dulberry, if you don't
like to see poor labouring folks happy for one day in the year, I'll
tell you this--you must keep out of Machynleth on St. David's day."

"Well! this tyranny goes beyond any thing I've seen: we all know that
Lord Londonderry has compelled Manchester and all England to wear
mourning: but this rustic tyrant is determined to make people merry
when, as every body must know, they wa