We drove along the pier to the wharf, where the steamer lay, and were received at once by Tom’s friend with all the warm welcome and hospitality of a sailor, united with the address and polish of a very finished gentleman.  As we descended the companion-ladder to the cabin, my mind became speedily divested of any fears I might have indulged in, as to the want of preparation of our entertainer.  The table was covered with all the appanage of handsome plate and cut glass, while the side-tables glittered with a magnificent dessert, and two large wine-coolers presented an array of champagne necks shining with their leaden cravats that would have tempted an anchorite.

I remember very little else of that evening than the coup d’oeil I have mentioned; besides, were my memory more retentive, I might scruple to trespass farther on my reader’s patience, by the detail of those pleasures, which, like love-letters, however agreeable to the parties immediately concerned, are very unedifying to all others.  I do remember, certainly, that good stories and capital songs succeeded each other with a rapidity only to be equalled by the popping of corks; and have also a very vague and indistinct recollection of a dance round the table, evidently to finish a chorus, but which, it appears, finished me too, for I saw no more that night.

How many men have commemorated the waking sensations of their fellow-men, after a night’s debauch; yet at the same time, I am not aware of any one having perfectly conveyed even a passing likeness to the mingled throng of sensations which crowd one’s brain on such an occasion.  The doubt of what has passed, by degrees yielding to the half-consciousness of the truth, the feeling of shame, inseparable except to the habitually hard-goer, for the events thus dimly pictured, the racking headache and intense thirst, with the horror of the potation recently indulged in:  the recurring sense of the fun or drollery of a story or an incident which provokes us again to laugh despite the jarring of our brain from the shaking.  All this and more most men have felt, and happy are they when their waking thoughts are limited to such, at such times as these—­the matter becomes considerably worse, when the following morning calls for some considerable exertion, for which even in your best and calmest moments, you only find yourself equal.

It is truly unpleasant, on rubbing your eyes and opening your ears, to discover that the great bell is ringing the half-hour before your quarterly examination at college, while Locke, Lloyd, and Lucian are dancing a reel through your brain, little short of madness; scarcely less agreeable is it, to learn that your friend Captain Wildfire is at the door in his cab, to accompany you to the Phoenix, to stand within twelve paces of a cool gentleman who has been sitting with his arm in Eau de Cologne for the last half-hour, that he may pick you out “artist-like.”  There are, besides these, innumerable situations in which our preparations of the night would appear, as none of the wisest; but I prefer going at once to my own, which, although considerably inferior in difficulty, was not without its own “desagremens.”