excitement to render him perfectly unconscious as to the probability of
his standing upon his _occipito-frontalis_ or _plantar fascia_. But as he
collects his ideas, he contrives to muster sufficient presence of mind to
order a Welsh rabbit, and in the interim of its arrival earnestly
contemplates the scene around him. There is the room which, in after life,
so vividly recurs to him, with its bygone _souvenirs_ of mirth, when he is
sitting up all night at a bad case in the mud cottage of a pauper union.
There are its blue walls, its wainscot and its pillars, its lamps and
ground-glass shades, within which the gas jumps and flares so fitfully;
its two looking-glasses, that reflect the room and its occupants from one
to the other in an interminable vista. There also is Mr. Rhodes, bending
courteously over the backs of the visiters' chairs, and hoping everybody
has got everything to their satisfaction, or bestowing an occasional
subdued acknowledgment upon an _habitué_ who chances to enter; and the
professional gentlemen all laying their heads together at the top of the
table to pitch the key of the next glee; and the waiters bustling up and
down with all sorts of tempting comestibles; and the gentleman in the
Chesterfield wrapper smoking a cigar at the side of the room, while he
leans back and contemplates the ceiling, as if his whole soul was
concentrated in its smoke-discoloured mouldings.

The new man is in ecstasies; he beholds the realization of the Arabian
Nights, and when the harmony commences again, he is fairly entranced. At
first, he is fearful of adding the efforts of his laryngeal "little
muscles with the long names" to swell the chorus; but, after the second
glass of stout and a "go of whiskey," he becomes emboldened, and when the
gentleman with the bass voice sings about the Monks of Old, what a jovial
race they were, our friend trolls out how "they laughed, ha, ha!" so
lustily, that he gets quite red in the face from obstructed jugulars, and
applauds, when it has concluded, until everything upon the table performs