ersation, greatly diverted many young gentlemen who used
the Back Kitchen as a place of nightly entertainment and refreshment.
Huxter, who had a fine natural genius for mimicking everything, whether
it was a favourite tragic or comic actor, or a cock on a dunghill, a
corkscrew going into a bottle and a cork issuing thence, or an Irish
officer of genteel connexions who offered himself as an object of
imitation with only too much readiness, talked his talk, and twanged his
poor old long bow whenever drink, a hearer, and an opportunity occurred,
studied our friend the General with peculiar gusto, and drew the
honest fellow out many a night. A bait, consisting of sixpennyworth of
brandy-and-water, the worthy old man was sure to swallow: and under the
influence of this liquor, who was more happy than he to tell his stories
of his daughter's triumphs and his own, in love, war, drink, and polite
society? Thus Huxter was enabled to present to his friends many pictures
of Costigan: of Costigan fighting a jewel in the Phaynix--of Costigan
and his interview with the Juke of York--of Costigan at his sonunlaw's
teeble, surrounded by the nobilitee of his countree--of Costigan,
when crying drunk, at which time he was in the habit of confidentially
lamenting his daughter's ingratichewd, and stating that his grey hairs
were hastening to a praymachure greeve. And thus our friend was the
means of bringing a number of young fellows to the Back Kitchen, who
consumed the landlord's liquors whilst they relished the General's
peculiarities, so that mine host pardoned many of the latter's foibles,
in consideration of the good which they brought to his house. Not the
highest position in life was this--certainly, or one which, if we had a
reverence for an old man, we would be anxious that he should occupy: but
of this aged buffoon it may be mentioned that he had no particular idea
that his condition of life was not a high one, and that in his whiskied
blood there was not a black drop, nor in his muddled brains a bitter
feeling, against any mortal being. Even his child, his cruel Emily, he
would have taken to his heart and forgiven with tears; and what more can
one say of the Christian charity of a man than that he is actually ready
to forgive those who have done him every kindness, and with whom he is
wrong in a dispute!

There was some idea amongst the young men who frequented the Back
Kitchen, and made themselves merry with the society of Captai