THE ROWSEVILLERS.—No. I.

O’DONNELL’S PRIZE.

“To be plain with you,” said the barber, shaking his head, “I can scarce believe what you say.” Gil Blas.

When I was in the dragoons, we were quartered, for a while, not far from Rowseville, and it was my lot to receive a general invitation to the dinners of the club. A jollier set of fellows never drew cork or emptied a decanter—heaven be merciful to them for their sins! They always had the best a-going; could tell north from south side Madeira,—and tossed off their bumpers, hour in and hour out, as easily as an old spinster drinks her tea. As for their president, Captain Humphreys, he was a paragon of a good fellow. Short, square, deep chested, and muscular as Hercules, he was just the man to keep a set of such spirits in order; and, I verily believe, if any of the youngsters had ventured to dispute his will, he would have tossed them over the marquee as easily as I could hurl a racket ball. He had spent most of his life at sea, having seen service in every latitude. He could tell a good story, and danced a jig to perfection. He was, moreover, something of a gourmand; always presided over our culinary rites; and made the best chowder of any man in the States, or, for that matter, as the old cook said, “in the ’varsal world.”

There is nothing like fishing, and a table on the green sward, to give one an appetite; and it would have done your heart good to have seen us on the day I first dined with the club—but especially to have beheld Humphrey’s jovial face, when he announced the opening toast. And then such a time as followed. Sherry, Port, Madeira, Jamaica and Cogniac!—why they chased each other from the table faster than the witches did old Tam O’Shanter, in the road by Ayr. Some of the youngsters soon began to grow noisy; and even one or two of their seniors winked a good deal unnecessarily; but Humphreys, and a set of the older stagers at the head of the table, kept it up, without drawing a rein, until I began to think they could fag down even Bacchus himself. And all this time their jests would have made a hermit die with laughter! Yet Humphreys never suffered his youngsters to indulge beyond a certain point, and he had a story to account for this circumspection which made my ribs sore for a week after hearing it.

“Silence, you addle-heads,” he thundered, as soon as he saw they were getting beyond their depths—“can’t one of you sing at a time, without keeping up such an infernal clatter of Dutch, French, English and Congo songs? You remind me of a set of chaps I had the honor to dine with in Boston—no, not the honor, for they all drank to excess—and a man in that state” (and here the worthy speaker, by way of corollary, tossed off a bumper) “is a shock to my moral feelings. Keep in soundings if you can’t sail safely out of them; but, for heaven’s sake, don’t disgrace our table with a set of indecent inebriates.