ad of the table.

Very quickly my eyes became accustomed to the smoke, especially after
I was handed a filled clay pipe by my new and excellent friend. I
began to study the room and the people in it. The room was panelled
in new oak, and the chairs and table were all of new oak, well carved.
It was the handsomest room I had ever been in.

Afterward I looked toward the growl. I saw a little old man in a chair
much too big for him, and in a wig much too big for him. His head was
bent forward until his sharp chin touched his breast, and out from
under his darkling brows a pair of little eyes flashed angrily and
arrogantly. All faces were turned toward him, and all ears were open
to his growls. He was the king; it was Fullbil.

His speech was all addressed to one man, and I looked at the latter.
He was a young man with a face both Roman and feminine; with that type
of profile which is possessed by most of the popular actors in the
reign of His Majesty of to-day. He had luxuriant hair, and, stung by
the taunts of Fullbil, he constantly brushed it nervously from his
brow while his sensitive mouth quivered with held-in retorts. He was
Bobbs, the great dramatist.

And as Fullbil growled, it was a curiously mixed crowd which applauded
and laughed. There were handsome lordlings from the very top of London
cheek by cheek with sober men who seemed to have some intellectual
occupation in life. The lordlings did the greater part of the
sniggering. In the meantime everybody smoked hard and drank punch
harder. During occasional short pauses in Fullbil's remarks, gentlemen
passed ecstatic comments one to another.--"Ah, this is indeed a mental
feast!"--"Did ye ever hear him talk more wittily?"--"Not I, faith; he
surpasses even himself!"--"Is it not a blessing to sit at table with
such a master of learning and wit?"--"Ah, these are the times to live
in!"

I thought it was now opportune to say something of the same kind to my
amiable friend, and so I did it. "The old corpse seems to be saying a
prayer," I remarked. "Why don't he sing it?"

My new friend looked at me, all agape, like a fish just over the side
of the boat. "'Tis Fullbil, the great literary master--" he began; but
at this moment Fullbil, having recovered from a slight fit of
coughing, resumed his growls, and my friend subsided again into a
worshipping listener.

For my part I could not follow completely the words of the great
literary master, but I construed that he