struggled for a moment, and then all was over.  I shall never forget the comic look of despair he cast upon the other five over-occupied shells.  I broke the perfect stillness by asking him how he felt.  “Profoundly grateful,” he gasped, “and as if I had swallowed a little baby.”  It was many years ago since we gathered about him on that occasion, but, if my memory serves me, we had what might be called a pleasant evening.  Indeed, I remember much hilarity, and sounds as of men laughing and singing far into midnight.  I could not deny, if called upon to testify in court, that we had a good time on that frosty November evening.

We had many happy days and nights together both in England and America, but I remember none happier than that evening we passed with him when the Punch people came to dine at his own table with the silver statuette of Mr. Punch in full dress looking down upon the hospitable board from the head of the table.  This silver figure always stood in a conspicuous place when Tom Taylor, Mark Lemon, Shirley Brooks, and the rest of his jolly companions and life-long cronies were gathered together.  If I were to say here that there were any dull moments on that occasion, I should not expect to be strictly believed.

Thackeray’s playfulness was a marked peculiarity; a great deal of the time he seemed like a school-boy, just released from his task.  In the midst of the most serious topic under discussion he was fond of asking permission to sing a comic song, or he would beg to be allowed to enliven the occasion by the instant introduction of a brief double-shuffle.  Barry Cornwall told me that when he and Charles Lamb were once making up a dinner-party together, Charles asked him not to invite a certain lugubrious friend of theirs.  “Because,” said Lamb, “he would cast a damper even over a funeral.”  I have often contrasted the habitual qualities of that gloomy friend of theirs with the astounding spirits of both Thackeray and Dickens.  They always seemed to me to be standing in the sunshine, and to be constantly warning other people out of cloudland.  During Thackeray’s first visit to America his jollity knew no bounds, and it became necessary often to repress him when he was walking in the street.  I well remember his uproarious shouting and dancing when he was told that the tickets to his first course of readings were all sold, and when we rode together from his hotel to the lecture-hall he insisted on thrusting both his long legs out of the carriage window, in deference, as he said, to his magnanimous ticket-holders.  An instance of his procrastination occurred the evening of his first public appearance in America.  His lecture was advertised to take place at half past seven, and when he was informed of the hour, he said he would try and be ready at eight o’clock, but thought it very doubtful.  Horrified at this assertion, I tried to impress upon him the importance of punctuality on this, the night of his first bow to an American