with a roast pig!" Dick's weapon failed before his anger; and when at
length the battered colonel escaped into the door of a friendly
dwelling, the victor had nothing in his hands but the hind legs of the
roaster. He re-entered the dining-room flourishing these over his head,
and venting his still unappeased wrath in great oaths.

The company reassembled, and finished their dinner as best they might.
In reply to a toast, Hardy made a speech, wherein he apologized for
sacrificing the principal dinner-dish, and, as he expressed it, for
putting public property to private uses. In reply to this speech a treat
was ordered. In those good old days folks were not so virtuous but that
a man might have cakes and ale without being damned for it, and it is
presumable the day wound up with a spree.

After the squire got older, and a family grew up around him, he was not
always victorious in his contests. For example, a question lately arose
about the refurnishing of the house. On their return from a visit to
Richmond the ladies took it into their heads that the parlors looked
bare and old-fashioned, and it was decided by them in secret conclave
that a change was necessary.

"What!" said he, in a towering passion, "isn't it enough that you spend
your time and money in vinegar to sour sweet peaches, and your sugar to
sweeten crab-apples, that you must turn the house you were born in
topsy-turvy? God help us! we've a house with windows to let the light
in, and you want curtains to keep it out; we've plastered the walls to
make them white, and now you want to paste blue paper over them; we've
waxed floors to walk on, and we must pay two dollars a yard for a carpet
to save the oak plank! Begone with your nonsense, ye demented jades!"