"D'you zee that drunken fool standing there in the street?" says he, pointing at the mirror. "It's Lord Lyons, s'drunk as a fool."
I told him that he saw only his own figure in the glass, and he said he would see me safe home if I would go right away. Chancing at the moment to catch sight of a wine-glass, my boy, he walked toward it in a circle, and hastily filled the outside of it from an empty decanter. Then balancing himself on one foot, and placing his disengaged hand on a pyramid of blanc mange to support himself, he said impressively:
"Ladles, and gentle-lemons, the army will move on the first of May, and—"
Here the general went down under the table like a stately ship foundering at sea, and was heard to ask the wine-cooler to tell his family that he died for his country.
Owing to the very hilly nature of the street, my boy, I was obliged to accompany the general home in a hack; and as we rolled along towards the hotel, he disclosed to me an agitated history of his mother's family.
When last I saw him he was trying to make out why the chambermaid had put four pillows on his bed, and endeavoring to lift off the two extra ones without disturbing the others.
Candidly speaking, my boy, this New-Year's-calls business is not a sensible calling, and simply amounts to a caravan of monkeys attending a menagerie of trained crinoline.
Yours, philosophically,
Orpheus C. Kerr.