our duty, he said solemnly, to commemorate it.  At present, and en attendant—­rather as an occasion for a public participation in public sympathy, than as in itself any commensurate testimony of our interest—­he proposed that the club should meet and dine together.  A splendid public dinner, therefore, was given by the club; to which all amateurs were invited from a distance of one hundred miles.

Of this dinner there are ample short-hand notes amongst the archives of the club.  But they are not “extended,” to speak diplomatically; and the reporter is missing—­I believe, murdered.  Meantime, in years long after that day, and on an occasion perhaps equally interesting, viz., the turning up of Thugs and Thuggism, another dinner was given.  Of this I myself kept notes, for fear of another accident to the short-hand reporter.  And I here subjoin them.  Toad-in-the-hole, I must mention, was present at this dinner.  In fact, it was one of its sentimental incidents.  Being as old as the valleys at the dinner of 1812, naturally he was as old as the hills at the Thug dinner of 1838.  He had taken to wearing his beard again; why, or with what view, it passes my persimmon to tell you.  But so it was.  And his appearance was most benign and venerable.  Nothing could equal the angelic radiance of his smile as he inquired after the unfortunate reporter, (whom, as a piece of private scandal, I should tell you that he was himself supposed to have murdered, in a rapture of creative art:) the answer was, with roars of laughter, from the under-sheriff of our county—­“Non est inventus.”  Toad-in-the-hole laughed outrageously at this:  in fact, we all thought he was choking; and, at the earnest request of the company, a musical composer furnished a most beautiful glee upon the occasion, which was sung five times after dinner, with universal applause and inextinguishable laughter, the words being these, (and the chorus so contrived, as most beautifully to mimic the peculiar laughter of Toad-in-the-hole:)—­

  “Et interrogatum est a Toad-in-the hole—­Ubi est ille reporter? 
  Et responsum est cum cachinno—­Non est inventus.”

CHORUS.

  “Deinde iteratum est ab omnibus, cum cachinnatione undulante—­
  Non est inventus.”

Toad-in-the-hole, I ought to mention, about nine years before, when an express from Edinburgh brought him the earliest intelligence of the Burke-and-Hare revolution in the art, went mad upon the spot; and, instead of a pension to the express for even one life, or a knighthood, endeavored to burke him; in consequence of which he was put into a strait waistcoat.  And that was the reason we had no dinner then.  But now all of us were alive and kicking, strait-waistcoaters and others; in fact, not one absentee was reported upon the entire roll.  There were also many foreign amateurs present.

Dinner being over, and the cloth drawn, there was a general call made for the new glee of Non est inventus; but, as this would have interfered with the requisite gravity of the company during the earlier toasts, I overruled the call.  After the national toasts had been given, the first official toast of the day was, The Old Man of the Mountains—­drunk in solemn silence.