gallant, as Quartermaster Bottlenose of the Tipperary Rangers. 'Twas
murder, by Jupiter."

"I perfectly agree with you, Mr. Tims; Did you challenge him to the
duello?"

"A _leetle_ patience, if you please, sir, and you shall hear
all. During the violence of my love-fits, I committed a variety of
professional mistakes. I sent at one time a pot of bear's grease away
by the mail, in a wig-box, to a member of parliament in Yorkshire; and
burned a whole batch of baked hair to ashes, while singing Moore's 'When
he who adores thee,' in attitude, before a block, dressed up for the
occasion with a fashionable wig upon it--to say nothing of my having, in
a fit of abstraction, given a beautiful young lady, who was going that
same evening to a Lord Mayor's ball, the complete charity-workhouse cut,
leaving her scalp as bare as the back of my hand. But cheer up!--to my
happy astonishment, sir, matters worked like a charm. What a
parley-vooing and billet-dooing passed between us! We would have
required a porter for the sole purpose. Then we had stolen interviews
of two hours' duration each, for several successive nights, at the
old horologer's back-door, during which, besides a multiplicity of
small-talk--thanks to his deafness--I tried my utmost to entrap her
affections, by reciting sonnets, and spouting bits of plays in the
manner of the tragedy performers. These were the happy times, sir! The
world was changed for me. Paddington canal seemed the river Pactolus,
and Rag-Fair Elysium!

"The old boy, however, ignorant of our orgies, was still bothering
his brains to bring about matrimony between his daughter and the
veteran--who, though no younger than Methusalem, as stiff as the