ke that grin off your face, you scoundrel! Now," I added, "we
are ready to begin. Wait, now. You must each have something to hold in
your fist. Let me be thinking. There's only one plate and little of
anything else. Ah, I have it! A bottle! Paddy, you shall hold one of
the bottles. Put your right hand underneath it, and with your left
hand hold it by the neck. But keep your elbows out. Jem, what the
devil am I to give you to hold? Ah, I have it! Another bottle! Hold it
the same as Paddy. Now! Stand square on your feet, and hold your heads
away high, and stick your elbows out a little, and look stupid. I am
going to eat my supper."

I finished my first and second bottles with the silence only broken by
the sound of my knife-play and an occasional restless creaking of
boots as one of my men slyly shifted his position. Wishing to call for
my third bottle, I turned and caught them exchanging a glance of
sympathetic bewilderment. As my eye flashed upon them, they stiffened
up like grenadier recruits.

But I was not for being too hard on them at first. "'Tis enough for
one lesson," said I. "Put the bottles by me and take your ease."

With evident feelings of relief they slunk back to the stools by the
fire, where they sat recovering their spirits.

After my supper I sat in the chair toasting my shins and lazily
listening to my lads finishing the fowls. They seemed much more like
themselves, sitting there grinding away at the bones and puffing with
joy. In the red firelight it was such a scene of happiness that I
misdoubted for a moment the wisdom of my plan to make them into fine
grand numskulls.

I could see that all men were not fitted for the work. It needed a
beefy person with fat legs and a large amount of inexplicable dignity,
a regular God-knows-why loftiness. Truth, in those days, real talent
was usually engaged in some form of rascality, barring the making of
books and sermons. When one remembers the impenetrable dulness of the
great mass of the people, the frivolity of the gentry, the arrogance
and wickedness of the court, one ceases to wonder that many men of
taste took to the highway as a means of recreation and livelihood. And
there I had been attempting to turn my two frank rascals into the kind
of sheep-headed rubbish whom you could knock down a great staircase,
and for a guinea they would say no more. Unless I was the kicker, I
think Paddy would have returned up the staircase after his assailant.
Jem Bot