wing a cloud
into dreamland, while Fatima or Zoe insists on taking a puff with you.

'But as she said, '_Hathih al-kissah moaththirah_, which, in the
vernacular, is. 'This history is affecting,' so let us pass it by. We
finished those two bottles of sherry, and if Mohammed, in his majesty,
refuses admittance to two Peris into paradise, because they drank sherry
that night, let the sins be on our shoulders, WE are to blame.

* * * * *

'Next morning, at seven o'clock, I was at the banker's, and received his
orders, and at six o'clock that evening was steaming out of Alexandria,
bound to Naples _via_ Malta. A little over twenty-four hours, and I had
SEEN THE ORIENT THROUGH SHERRY--pale, golden, and serenely beautiful!

'Pass the punch.'

* * * * *

Very welcome is our pleasant contributor--he who of late discoursed on
'honeyed thefts' and rural religious discipline--and now, in the
present letter, he gives us his views on meals, feeds, banquets,
symposia, or by whatever name the reader may choose to designate
assemblies for the purpose of eating.

Please make room at this table, right here, for me. Surely at a
table of such dimensions, there should be plenty of room. Many a
table-scene do I now recall, in days gone by, 'all of which I saw,
and part of which I was,' but nothing like this. Tables of all
sorts and sizes, but never a CONTINENTAL table before. I suppose
the nearest approach to it was _the_ picnic dinner the wee
youngsters used to eat off the _ground_! A CONTINENTAL table! The
most hospitable idea imaginable. Give place! Do you demand my
credentials, my card, my ticket? Here we have it all; a little note
from mine host, Mr. LELAND, inviting the bearer to this monthly
repast, and requesting, very properly--it was the way we always
did, when we used to get up picnics--that the receiver of the note
bring some sort of refreshments along. Thank you. This seat is very
comfortable. What more appropriate, at such a time, than the
discussion of _the Meal?_

I protest I am no glutton; in fact, I despise the man whose
meal-times are the epochs of his life; yet I frankly confess to
emotions of a very positive character, in contemplating the
associations of the table, and I admit farther, that I take
pleasure in the reality as well as in the imagination. I