table. "But all this won't help our
good friend Smith in making a start at his story, which, I believe, was
the reason why we assembled."

"The Dickens it is!" stammered a little man beside him, and everybody
laughed, especially the genial man, who cried out, "Charley Lamb,
Charley Lamb, you'll never alter. You would make a pun if you were
hanged for it."

"That would be a case of haltering," returned the other, on which
everybody laughed again.

By this time I had begun to dimly realise in my confused brain the
enormous honour which had been done me. The greatest masters of fiction
in every age of English letters had apparently made a rendezvous beneath
my roof, in order to assist me in my difficulties. There were many faces
at the table whom I was unable to identify; but when I looked hard
at others I often found them to be very familiar to me, whether from
paintings or from mere description. Thus between the first two speakers,
who had betrayed themselves as Defoe and Smollett, there sat a dark,
saturnine corpulent old man, with harsh prominent features, who I was
sure could be none other than the famous author of Gulliver. There were
several others of whom I was not so sure, sitting at the other side of
the table, but I conjecture that both Fielding and Richardson were among
them, and I could swear to the lantern-jaws and cadaverous visage of
Lawrence Sterne. Higher up I could see among the crowd the high forehead
of Sir Walter Scott, the masculine features of George Eliott, and the
flattened nose of Thackeray; while amongst the living I recognised James
Payn, Walter Besant, the lady known as "Ouida," Robert Louis Stevenson,
and several of lesser note. Never before, probably, had such an
assemblage of choice spirits gathered under one roof.

"Well," said Sir Walter Scott, speaking with a pronounced accent, "ye
ken the auld proverb, sirs, 'Ower mony cooks,' or as the Border minstrel
sang--

'Black Johnstone wi' his troopers ten
Might mak' the heart turn cauld,
But Johnstone when he's a' alane
Is waur ten thoosand fauld.'

The Johnstones were one of the Redesdale families, second cousins of the
Armstrongs, and connected by marriage to----"

"Perhaps, Sir Walter," interrupted Thackeray, "you would take the
responsibility off our hands by yourself dictating the commencement of a
story to this young literary aspirant."

"Na, na!" cried Sir Walter; "I'll do my share, but