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so that, should he in his homeward course be tempted to stray into the path of undue conviviality, he might sooner or later be safely delivered at his destination. Although the statement is in a measure confirmed in the memoirs of Hodder and of Blanchard Jerrold himself, one cannot help being struck at the conflict between it and the story of Jerrold's reply to the drunken young sparks who met him in the street at midnight, and asked him the way to the entertainment known as "Judge and Jury"--"Straight on, straight on as you are going, young gentlemen--you can't miss them!" He was himself greatly pleased with his milder witticisms, and, it is said, chuckled complacently at the neatness of his conceit when toasting Mr. Punch, at one of the Wednesday Dinners, in which he declared that "he would never require spirit while he had such good Lemon-aid." He loved the paper as few others loved it, and very, very rarely missed the weekly gathering--attending it, indeed, up to within a week or so of his death. Not less scrupulous in his attendance was Gilbert Abbott a Beckett, who, when residing at holiday-times at Boulogne, would regularly come up to town for their Cabinet Council; and if ill-chance unavoidably prevented his wished-for presence, he would write--after the custom adopted by many of his colleagues--a full explanation and apology. But the necessity very seldom arose. True son of his father, Gilbert a Beckett was equally faithful to the Table, and in spite of the paralysis of the legs from which he suffered (and for which he was for a time duly chaffed by the advice of Percival Leigh, lest there might be hysteria about the disease) he attended the Wednesday gatherings with what regularity he could up to within a fortnight before he died. Thackeray, too, for many years after he ceased writing for _Punch_ would weekly join the Staff, and always received a cordial and affectionate welcome. The gentle Leech--who, according to Shirley Brooks, attended the Dinner for more than twenty years without uttering an unkind or an angry word--was at the Table within a few days of his death, but, in Brooks's words, "scarcely seemed to understand what was going on." And yet another member of the Old Guard, who stood by his post to the end, was "The Professor," Percival Leigh, whose sense of wit was dulled with age, but whose mind was otherwise as bright as ever. But at the Dinners the genial, courteous old gentleman was listened to,
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