It so chanced, from my friend O’Flaherty’s habitual position at the foot of the table, and my post of honour near the head, that on the first day of my appearing there, the distance between us, not only precluded all possible intercourse, but any of those gentle hints as to habits and customs, a new arrival looks for at the hands of his better informed friend.  The only mode of recognition, to prove that we belonged to each other, being by that excellent and truly English custom of drinking wine together, Tom seized the first idle moment from his avocation as carver to say,

“Lorrequer, a glass of wine with you.”

Having, of course, acceded, he again asked,

“What wine do you drink?” intending thereby, as I afterwards learned, to send me from his end of the table, what wine I selected.  Not conceiving the object of the inquiry, and having hitherto without hesitation helped myself from the decanter, which bore some faint resemblance to sherry, I immediately turned for correct information to the bottle itself, upon whose slender neck was ticketed the usual slip of paper.  My endeavours to decypher the writing occupied time sufficient again to make O’Flaherty ask,

“Well, Harry, I’m waiting for you.  Will you have port?”

“No, I thank you,” I replied, having by this revealed the inscription.  “No, I thank you; I’ll just stick to my old friend here, Bob M’Grotty;” for thus I rendered familiarly the name of Rt.  M’Grotty on the decanter, and which I in my ignorance believed to be the boarding-house soubriquet for bad sherry.  That Mr. M’Grotty himself little relished my familiarity with either his name or property I had a very decisive proof, for turning round upon his chair, and surveying my person from head to foot with a look of fiery wrath, he thundered out in very broad Scotch,

“And by my saul, my freend, ye may just as weel finish it noo, for deil a glass o’ his ain wine did Bob M’Grotty, as ye ca’ him, swallow this day.”

The convulsion of laughter into which my blunder and the Scotchman’s passion threw the whole board, lasted till the cloth was withdrawn, and the ladies had retired to the drawing-room, the only individual at table not relishing the mistake being the injured proprietor of the bottle, who was too proud to accept reparation from my friend’s decanter, and would scarcely condescend to open his lips during the evening; notwithstanding which display of honest indignation, we contrived to become exceedingly merry and jocose, most of the party communicating little episodes of their life, in which, it is true, they frequently figured in situations that nothing but their native and natural candour would venture to avow.  One story I was considerably amused at; it was told by the counsellor, Mr. Daly, in illustration of the difficulty of rising at the bar, and which, as showing his own mode of obviating the delay that young professional men submit to from hard necessity, as well as in evidence of his strictly legal turn, I shall certainly recount, one of these days, for the edification of the junior bar.