A noise of laughter and talk was stilled gradually, as Evan made his bow into a spacious room, wherein, as the tops of pines are seen swimming on the morning mist, about a couple of dozen guests of divers conditions sat partially revealed through wavy clouds of tobacco-smoke.  By their postures, which Evan’s appearance by no means disconcerted, you read in a glance men who had been at ease for so many hours that they had no troubles in the world save the two ultimate perplexities of the British Sybarite, whose bed of roses is harassed by the pair of problems:  first, what to do with his legs; secondly, how to imbibe liquor with the slightest possible derangement of those members subordinate to his upper structure.  Of old the Sybarite complained.  Not so our self-helpful islanders.  Since they could not, now that work was done and jollity the game, take off their legs, they got away from them as far as they might, in fashions original or imitative:  some by thrusting them out at full length; some by cramping them under their chairs:  while some, taking refuge in a mental effort, forgot them, a process to be recommended if it did not involve occasional pangs of consciousness to the legs of their neighbours.  We see in our cousins West of the great water, who are said to exaggerate our peculiarities, beings labouring under the same difficulty, and intent on its solution.  As to the second problem:  that of drinking without discomposure to the subservient limbs:  the company present worked out this republican principle ingeniously, but in a manner beneath the attention of the Muse.  Let Clio record that mugs and glasses, tobacco and pipes, were strewn upon the table.  But if the guests had arrived at that stage when to reach the arm, or arrange the person, for a sip of good stuff, causes moral debates, and presents to the mind impediments equal to what would be raised in active men by the prospect of a great excursion, it is not to be wondered at that the presence of a stranger produced no immediate commotion.  Two or three heads were half turned; such as faced him imperceptibly lifted their eyelids.

‘Good evening, sir,’ said one who sat as chairman, with a decisive nod.

‘Good night, ain’t it?’ a jolly-looking old fellow queried of the speaker, in an under-voice.

‘Gad, you don’t expect me to be wishing the gentleman good-bye, do you?’ retorted the former.

‘Ha! ha!  No, to be sure,’ answered the old boy; and the remark was variously uttered, that ‘Good night,’ by a caprice of our language, did sound like it.

‘Good evening’s “How d’ ye do?”—­“How are ye?” Good night’s “Be off, and be blowed to you,"’ observed an interpreter with a positive mind; and another, whose intelligence was not so clear, but whose perceptions had seized the point, exclaimed:  ’I never says it when I hails a chap; but, dash my buttons, if I mightn’t ‘a done, one day or another!  Queer!’