At the hour named, the expedition, with many a promise that the music should be sweet, departed hilariously:  Will Burdock, the left-handed cricketer and hard-hitter, being leader; with Peter Bartholomew, potboy, John Girling, miller’s man, and Ned Thewk, gardener’s assistant, for lieutenants.  On the march, silence was proclaimed, and partially enforced, after two fights against authority.  Near the sign of King William’s Head, General Burdock called a halt, and betrayed irresolution with reference to the route to be adopted; but as none of his troop could at all share such a condition of mind in the neighbourhood of an inn, he was permitted to debate peacefully with his lieutenants, while the rest burst through the doors and hailed the landlord:  a proceeding he was quickly induced to imitate.  Thus, when the tail shows strongest decision of purpose, the head must follow.

An accurate oinometer, or method of determining what shall be the condition of the spirit of man according to the degrees of wine or beer in him, were surely of priceless service to us.  For now must we, to be certain of our sanity and dignity, abstain, which is to clip, impoverish, imprison the soul:  or else, taking wings of wine, we go aloft over capes, and islands, and seas, but are even as balloons that cannot make for any line, and are at the mercy of the winds—­without a choice, save to come down by virtue of a collapse.  Could we say to ourselves, in the great style, This is the point where desire to embrace humanity is merged in vindictiveness toward individuals:  where radiant sweet temper culminates in tremendous wrath:  where the treasures of anticipation, waxing riotous, arouse the memory of wrongs:  in plain words, could we know positively, and from the hand of science, when we have had enough, we should stop.  There is not a doubt that we should stop.  It is so true we should stop, that, I am ready to say, ladies have no right to call us horrid names, and complain of us, till they have helped us to some such trustworthy scientific instrument as this which I have called for.  In its absence, I am persuaded that the true natural oinometer is the hat.  Were the hat always worn during potation; were ladies when they retire to place it on our heads, or, better still, chaplets of flowers; then, like the wise ancients, we should be able to tell to a nicety how far we had advanced in our dithyramb to the theme of fuddle and muddle.  Unhappily the hat does not forewarn:  it is simply indicative.  I believe, nevertheless, that science might set to work upon it forthwith, and found a system.  When you mark men drinking who wear their hats, and those hats are seen gradually beginning to hang on the backs of their heads, as from pegs, in the fashion of a fez, the bald projection of forehead looks jolly and frank:  distrust that sign:  the may-fly of the soul is then about to be gobbled up by the chub of the passions.  A hat worn fez-fashion is a dangerous hat.  A hat on the brows shows a man