“Thank you, Mr. Patterson, your character can stand it, I tell you, but mine can’t.”
“Friend of my soul, this goblet sip,” reiterated Patterson, offering Dogberry the glass.
“Thank you, Mr. Patterson, I would not choose any,” said he.
“You can’t but choose, Dogberry; there is no alternative. Do you remember what the poet beautifully says of the Roman daughter, who sustained her imprisoned father from her own breast?—
‘Drink, drink and live, old man; Heaven’s realm holds no such tide.’
Do you remember it? I bid you drink, then, and I say to you, Hebe nor Ganymede ever offered to the immortals purer wine than that. Drink! here’s to you, Dogberry, and to your speedy promotion,” and Mr. Patterson swallowed every drop in the glass, and re-filling it, handed it to the usher.
Without much hesitation, he drank it. He now filled me up a glass nearly full, and I followed the example of my preceptor, he the while looking at me with astonishment.
“How do you like the letter, Mr. Dogberry?” asked Mr. Patterson of the pedagogue.
“What letter, sir? Mr. Patterson, I must say this is a strange proceeding. I don’t know, sir, to what you allude.”
“Don’t know to what I allude! Why, the letter wishing to know if you would take the academy at the same price at which Sears now holds it.”