I recollect one night when we were playing a round game (I had been
looking at her nose very eagerly and sadly for some time), she of
herself brought up the conversation about eating, and confessed that she
had five meals a day.

"THAT ACCOUNTS FOR IT!" says I, flinging down the cards, and springing
up and rushing like a madman out of the room. I rushed away into the
night, and wrestled with my passion. "What! Marry," said I, "a woman who
eats meat twenty-one times in a week, besides breakfast and tea? Marry a
sarcophagus, a cannibal, a butcher's shop?--Away!" I strove and strove.
I drank, I groaned, I wrestled and fought with my love--but it overcame
me: one look of those eyes brought me to her feet again. I yielded
myself up like a slave; I fawned and whined for her; I thought her nose
was not so VERY red.

Things came to this pitch that I sounded his Highness's Minister to know
whether he would give me service in the Duchy; I thought of purchasing
an estate there. I was given to understand that I should get a
chamberlain's key and some post of honor did I choose to remain, and
I even wrote home to my brother Tom in England, hinting a change in my
condition.

At this juncture the town of Hamburg sent his Highness the Grand Duke
(apropos of a commercial union which was pending between the two States)
a singular present: no less than a certain number of barrels of oysters,
which are considered extreme luxuries in Germany, especially in the
inland parts of the country, where they are almost unknown.

In honor of the oysters and the new commercial treaty (which arrived