"Do you steal them and then run away?"
"I've told thee all, I'll tell no more, though short the story be; let me go back where I was before and I'll get my living without troubling the corporation. That's Tom Moore, altered to suit circumstances."
"You ought to dispense with the brandy and gin."
"Oh, I could be happy with either, were 'tother dear charmer bottled up and the cork put in.—That's Dibdin with a vengeance."
"Young man, I fear you've led our young friend, whom you now see asleep amongst the broken crockery, from the paths of sobriety. What do you suppose will become of you if you go on in this way?"
"Alas, poor Yorick!—Peter, I mean. Who knows where he will lay his bones? Few and short will the prayers be said, and nobody'll feel any sorrow: but they'll cram him into his clay-cold bed, and bury somebody else on the top of him to-morrow; the minister will come, put on his robe and read the service; the choir'll sing a hymn; earth to earth and dust to gravel, and that'll be the last of Peter Knight."
The Higholdboy consulting with those members of the club who were still awake, it was resolved forthwith to put Peter Knight down stairs. As he went he remarked:
"Fare thee well, and if for ever, all the better.—That's Byron, revised and corrected."
Johnny Cake was manifestly too far gone to think of taking him to a hotel to sleep, and under these circumstances the club resolved itself into a committee of the whole, to remain in sleepy session all night, to take care of their prostrate fellow-member, Mr. Johnny Cake.