as Milton expresses it—then to take a hot-bath, and dress—then to sit down to a plain substantial dinner, in company with a select party of real good, honest, jolly Tories—and to spend the rest of the evening with them over a pitcher of cool Chateau-Margout, singing, laughing, speechifying, blending wit and wisdom, and winding up the whole with a devil, and a tumbler or two of hot rum-punch. This, repeated day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, may perhaps appear, to some people, a picture pregnant with ideas of the most sickening and disgusting monotony. Not so with me, however. I am a plain man. I could lead this dull course of uniform, unvaried existence for the whole period of the Millennium. Indeed, I mean to do so.
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When a man is drunk, it is no matter upon what he has got drunk.
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In whatever country one is, one should choose the dishes of the country. Every really national dish is good—at least, I never yet met with one that did not gratify my appetite. The Turkish pilaws are most excellent—but the so-called French cookery of Pera is execrable. In like manner, roast beef with Yorkshire pudding is always a prime feast in England, while John Bull’s Fricandeaux soufflées, etc., are decidedly anathema. What a horror, again, is a Bifsteck of the Palais Royal! On the same principle—(for all the fine arts follow exactly the same principles)—on the same principle it is, that while Principal Robertson, Dugald Stewart, Dr. Thomas Brown, and all the other would-be English writers of Scotland, have long since been voted tame, insipid, and tasteless diet, the real haggis-bag of a Robert Burns keeps, and must always keep, its place.
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The next best thing to a really good woman is a really good-natured one. The next worst thing to a really bad man (in other words, a knave) is a really good-natured man (in other words, a fool).
“WINDING UP THE WHOLE WITH A DEVIL, AND A TUMBLER OR TWO OF HOT RUM-PUNCH.”
A married woman commonly falls in love with a man as unlike her husband as is possible—but a widow very often marries a man extremely resembling the defunct. The reason is obvious.