A Return Dinner! Thirty people of all sorts and sizes, jammed--glued
together--shoulder to shoulder--knee to knee--all with their elbows in
each other's stomachs--most faces as red as fire, in spite of all those
floods of perspiration--two landed gentlemen from the Highlands--a
professor--four officers, naval and military, in his Majesty's and in
the Company's service--some advocates--two persons like
ministers--abundance of W.S.'s of course--an accoucheur--old ladies with
extraordinary things upon their heads, and grey hair dressed in a mode
fashionable before the flood--a few fat mothers of promising
families--some eldest daughters now nubile--a female of no particular
age, with a beard--two widows, the one buxom and blooming, with man-fond
eyes, the other pale and pensive, with long, dark eye-lashes, and lids
closed as if to hide a tear--there they all sit steaming through three
courses--well does the right hand of the one know what the left hand of
the other is doing--there is much suffering, mingled with much
enjoyment--for though hot, they are hungry--while all idea of speaking
having been, from the commencement of the feast, unanimously
abandoned--you might imagine yourself at an anniversary GAUDEAMUS of the
Deaf and Dumb.
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