'There is in this city--to
which, I think, you are a stranger? Sir, to your very good health
and our better acquaintance!--there is, in this city of Dunedin, a
certain implication of streets which reflects the utmost credit on
the designer and the publicans--at every hundred yards is seated
the Judicious Tavern, so that persons of contemplative mind are
secure, at moderate distances, of refreshment. I have been doing a
trot in that favoured quarter, favoured by art and nature. A few
chosen comrades--enemies of publicity and friends to wit and wine--
obliged me with their society. "Along the cool, sequestered vale
of Register Street we kept the uneven tenor of our way," sir.'
'It struck me, as you came in--' I began.
'O, don't make any bones about it!' he interrupted. 'Of course it
struck you! and let me tell you I was devilish lucky not to strike
myself. When I entered this apartment I shone "with all the pomp
and prodigality of brandy and water," as the poet Gray has in
another place expressed it. Powerful bard, Gray! but a niminy-
piminy creature, afraid of a petticoat and a bottle--not a man,
sir, not a man! Excuse me for being so troublesome, but what the
devil have I done with my fork? Thank you, I am sure. Temulentia,
quoad me ipsum, brevis colligo est. I sit and eat, sir, in a
London fog.
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