four guests to dine with his home party; the four were my father and mother, my brother Dan and myself, humble guests enough; and yet behind each of twelve chairs stood a gorgeous flunkey in powder and bright livery, with my lord’s gentleman superadded in undertaker’s evening trim, while the Earl himself wore his star and garter!  Of course too the buffet and the table were loaded, with resplendent plate.  That, scene of ostentation has been on the gray matter of my brain ever since young manhood, and I relieve myself now of the reminiscence for the first and last time.  In another page I speak of Prince Astor’s pure gold service when I dined with him at New.  York; and I have grateful memory of the almost palatial splendour wherewith a rich publisher entertained his guest at his castle under Arthur’s Seat; but in every case (and I might name others) my heart’s aspiration has been, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me.”  Mr. Vanderbilt was not happy with his millions; neither probably is poor Jack without a shot in his locker.

CHAPTER XXX.

SOCIAL AND RURAL.

In such a record of personals as this, it is fortunate both for the author and his readers if he has never been one of those literary lions who are merely histrionic creatures of society.  It is a privilege not to have to reproduce the common small-talk of ball-rooms and garden-parties, nor to be obliged to make the most, after a semi-libellous fashion, of after-dinner scandals, or gossip in the smoking-room.  Not having heard them he cannot well report racy anecdotes, whereof sundry memoirs have been too full.  In the happier condition of a partial anchoritism I have escaped clubs, London seasons, and country mansion gaieties; as a youth and to middle manhood a stammerer, I would not willingly court the humiliations of chattering society, and thereafter, up to to-day, a domestic country gentleman of literary pursuits, I have avoided (as far as possible) fashionable gatherings of every sort, social, theological, or political.  Not that I abjure—­it is far otherwise—­any kind of genial intercourse with my fellows; a few friends are my delight, but I never would belong to a club, though sometimes specially tempted by indulgence as to terms (more than once having been offered a free and immediate entry), nor to any society or charity that expected of me personal publicity or active service,—­albeit, once, and once only, I had to figure as a reluctant chairman at Exeter Hall.  Privacy has ever been my preference; whence it will clearly be inferred how much I have had to sacrifice in the way of self-denial when forced by circumstances to enact the “old man eloquent” before assembled hundreds, sometimes thousands, as a public reader.  People who have made themselves acquainted with my “Proverbial Philosophy” may remember that my Essay on Speaking contrasts the misery of the man who cannot speak with