‘It struck me, as you came in—­’ I began.

‘O, don’t make any bones about it!’ he interrupted.  ’Of course it struck you! and let me tell you I was devilish lucky not to strike myself.  When I entered this apartment I shone “with all the pomp and prodigality of brandy and water,” as the poet Gray has in another place expressed it.  Powerful bard, Gray! but a niminy-piminy creature, afraid of a petticoat and a bottle—­not a man, sir, not a man!  Excuse me for being so troublesome, but what the devil have I done with my fork?  Thank you, I am sure.  Temulentia, quoad me ipsum, brevis colligo est.  I sit and eat, sir, in a London fog.  I should bring a link-boy to table with me; and I would too, if the little brutes were only washed!  I intend to found a Philanthropical Society for Washing the Deserving Poor and Shaving Soldiers.  I am pleased to observe that, although not of an unmilitary bearing, you are apparently shaved.  In my calendar of the virtues shaving comes next to drinking.  A gentleman may be a low-minded ruffian without sixpence, but he will always be close shaved.  See me, with the eye of fancy, in the chill hours of the morning, say about a quarter to twelve, noon—­see me awake!  First thing of all, without one thought of the plausible but unsatisfactory small beer, or the healthful though insipid soda-water, I take the deadly razor in my vacillating grasp; I proceed to skate upon the margin of eternity.  Stimulating thought!  I bleed, perhaps, but with medicable wounds.  The stubble reaped, I pass out of my chamber, calm but triumphant.  To employ a hackneyed phrase, I would not call Lord Wellington my uncle!  I, too, have dared, perhaps bled, before the imminent deadly shaving-table.’

In this manner the bombastic fellow continued to entertain me all through dinner, and by a common error of drunkards, because he had been extremely talkative himself, leaped to the conclusion that he had chanced on very genial company.  He told me his name, his address; he begged we should meet again; finally he proposed that I should dine with him in the country at an early date.

‘The dinner is official,’ he explained.  ’The office-bearers and Senatus of the University of Cramond—­an educational institution in which I have the honour to be Professor of Nonsense—­meet to do honour to our friend Icarus, at the old-established howff, Cramond Bridge.  One place is vacant, fascinating stranger,—­I offer it to you!’

‘And who is your friend Icarus?’ I asked,

‘The aspiring son of Daedalus!’ said he.  ’Is it possible that you have never heard the name of Byfield?’

‘Possible and true,’ said I.