A STORY WITHOUT A TAIL.
BY WILLIAM MAGINN, LL.D.
[MAGA. April 1834.]
CHAPTER I.
HOW WE WENT TO DINE AT JACK GINGER’S.
So it was finally agreed upon that we should dine at Jack Ginger’s chambers in the Temple, seated in a lofty story in Essex Court. There was, besides our host, Tom Meggot, Joe Macgillicuddy, Humpy Harlow, Bob Burke, Antony Harrison, and myself. As Jack Ginger had little coin and no credit, we contributed each our share to the dinner. He himself provided room, fire, candle, tables, chairs, tablecloth, napkins—no, not napkins; on second thoughts we did not bother ourselves with napkins—plates, dishes, knives, forks, spoons (which he borrowed from the wig-maker), tumblers, lemons, sugar, water, glasses, decanters—by the by, I am not sure that there were decanters—salt, pepper, vinegar, mustard, bread, butter (plain and melted), cheese, radishes, potatoes, and cookery. Tom Meggot was a cod’s head and shoulders, and oysters to match—Joe Macgillicuddy, a boiled leg of pork, with pease-pudding—Humpy Harlow, a sirloin of beef roast, with horse-radish—Bob Burke, a gallon of half-and-half, and four bottles of whisky, of prime quality (“Potteen,” wrote the Whiskyman, “I say, by Jupiter, but of which many-facture He alone knows”)—Antony Harrison, half-a-dozen of port, he having tick to that extent at some unfortunate wine-merchant’s—and I supplied cigars à discretion, and a bottle of rum, which I borrowed from a West Indian friend of mine as I passed by. So that, on the whole, we were in no danger of suffering from any of the extremes of hunger and thirst for the course of that evening.
We met at five o’clock—sharp—and very sharp. Not a man was missing when the clock of the Inner Temple struck the last stroke. Jack Ginger had done everything to admiration. Nothing could be more splendid than his turn-out. He had superintended the cooking himself of every individual dish with his own eyes—or rather eye—he having but one, the other having been lost in a skirmish when he was midshipman on board a pirate in the Brazilian service. “Ah!” said Jack, often and often, “these were my honest days. Gad! did I ever think when I was a pirate that I was at the end to turn rogue, and study the law!”—All was accurate to the utmost degree. The tablecloth, to be sure, was not exactly white, but it had been washed last week, and the collection of the plates was miscellaneous, exhibiting several of the choicest patterns of delf. We were not of the silver-fork school of poetry, but steel is not to be despised. If the table was somewhat rickety, the inequality in the legs was supplied by clapping a volume of Vesey under the short one. As for the chairs—but why weary about details? Chairs being made to be sat upon, it is sufficient to say that they answered their purposes; and whether they had backs or not—whether they were cane-bottomed, or hair-bottomed, or rush-bottomed, is nothing to the present inquiry.
Jack’s habits of discipline made him punctual, and dinner was on the table in less than three minutes after five. Down we sate, hungry as hunters and eager for the prey.
“Is there a parson in company?” said Jack Ginger, from the head of the table.