e traveller. "'How stands
the glass around;' that, you know, was written by Wolfe; at least, it was
sung by him the night before the battle of Quebec, and they call it
Wolfe's death song--

'How stands the glass around?
For shame, ye take no care, my boys!
How stands the glass around?'"

Here Picton forgot the next line, and substituted a drink for it, in
correct time with the music:

"'The trumpets sound;
The colors flying are, my boys,
To fight, kill, or wound'"----

Another slip of the memory [drink]:

"'May we still be found,'"

He has found it, and repeats emphatically:

"'May we still be found!
Content with our hard fare, my boys,

[all drink]

On the cold ground!'

"Then there is another song," said Picton, lighting his pipe with coal and
tongs; "'Wolfe and Montcalm'--you must know that," he continued,
addressing the old fisherman. But the ancient trilobite did not know it;
indeed, he was not a singer, so Picton trolled lustily forth--

"'He lifted up his head,
While the cannons did rattle,
To his aid de camp he said,
'How goes the battail?'
The aid de camp, he cried,
''Tis in our favor;'
'Oh! then,' brave Wolfe replied,
'I die with pleasure!'"

"There," said Picton, throwing himself back upon the warm and cosy furs,
"I am at the end of my rope, gentlemen. Sing away, some of you," and the
traveller drew a long spiral of smoke through his tube, and ejected it in
a succession of beautiful rings at the beams overhead.

"Picton," said I, "what a strange, romantic interest attaches itself to
the memory of Wolfe. The very song you have sung, 'How stands the glass
around,' although not written by him, for it was composed before he was
born, yet has a currency from the popular belief that he sang it on the
evening preceding his last battle. And, indeed, it is by no means certain
that Gray's Elegy does not derive additional interest from a kindred
tradition."

"What is that?" said the traveller.

"Of course you will remember it. When Gray had completed the Elegy, he
sent a copy of it to his friend, General Wolfe, in America; and the story
goes, that as the great hero was sitting, wrapped in his military cloak,
on board the barge which the sailors were rowing up the St. Lawrence,
towards Quebec, he produced the poem, and read it in silence by the waning
light of approaching evening, until he came to these