’Gentlemen!  ’Taint fust time you and I be met here, to salbrate this here occasion.  I say, not fust time, not by many a time, ’taint.  Well, gentlemen, I ain’t much of a speaker, gentlemen, as you know.  Howsever, here I be.  No denyin’ that.  I’m on my legs.  This here’s a strange enough world, and a man ’s a gentleman, I say, we ought for to be glad when we got ’m.  You know:  I’m coming to it shortly.  I ain’t much of a speaker, and if you wants somethin’ new, you must ax elsewhere:  but what I say is—­Bang it! here’s good health and long life to Mr. Tom, up there!’

‘No names !’ shouts the chairman, in the midst of a tremendous clatter.

Farmer Broadmead moderately disengages his breadth from the seat.  He humbly axes pardon, which is accorded him with a blunt nod.

Ale (to Beef what Eve was to Adam) circulates beneath a dazzling foam, fair as the first woman.

Mr. Tom (for the breach of the rules in mentioning whose name on a night when identities are merged, we offer sincere apologies every other minute), Mr. Tom is toasted.  His parents, who selected that day sixty years ago, for his bow to be made to the world, are alluded to with encomiums, and float down to posterity on floods of liquid amber.

But to see all the subtle merits that now begin to bud out from Mr. Tom, the chairman and giver of the feast; and also rightly to appreciate the speeches, we require to be enormously charged with Ale.  Mr. Raikes did his best to keep his head above the surface of the rapid flood.  He conceived the chairman in brilliant colours, and probably owing to the energy called for by his brain, the legs of the young man failed him twice, as he tried them.  Attention was demanded.  Mr. Raikes addressed the meeting.

The three young gentlemen-cricketers had hitherto behaved with a certain propriety.  It did not offend Mr. Raikes to see them conduct themselves as if they were at a play, and the rest of the company paid actors.  He had likewise taken a position, and had been the first to laugh aloud at a particular slip of grammar; while his shrugs at the aspirates transposed and the pronunciation prevalent, had almost established a free-masonry between him and one of the three young gentlemen-cricketers-a fair-haired youth, with a handsome, reckless face, who leaned on the table, humorously eyeing the several speakers, and exchanging by-words and laughs with his friends on each side of him.

But Mr. Raikes had the disadvantage of having come to the table empty in stomach—­thirsty exceedingly; and, I repeat, that as, without experience, you are the victim of divinely given Eve, so, with no foundation to receive it upon, are you the victim of good sound Ale.  He very soon lost his head.  He would otherwise have seen that he must produce a wonderfully-telling speech if he was to keep the position he had taken, and had better not attempt one.  The three young cricketers were hostile from the beginning.  All of them leant forward, calling attention loudly laughing for the fun to come.