I won't--I won't!" So I handed them down again to the owners; but I saw that he followed them with a glare of hungry regret as they departed.

Then he clasped his hands before his eyes to shut out the sight, and two minutes after lifted his head again, and said, in a hoarse but vehement whisper,-- '"And yet I must! Huntingdon, get me a glass!" '"Take the bottle, man!" said I, thrusting the brandy-bottle into his hand--but stop, I'm telling too much,' muttered the narrator, startled at the look I turned upon him.

'But no matter,' he recklessly added, and thus continued his relation: 'In his desperate eagerness, he seized the bottle and sucked away, till he suddenly dropped from his chair, disappearing under the table amid a tempest of applause.

The consequence of this imprudence was something like an apoplectic fit, followed by a rather severe brain fever--' 'And what did you think of yourself, sir ?' said I, quickly.
'Of course, I was very penitent,' he replied.

'I went to see him once or twice--nay, twice or thrice--or by'r lady, some four times--and when he got better, I tenderly brought him back to the fold.' 'What do you mean ?' 'I mean, I restored him to the bosom of the club, and compassionating the feebleness of his health and extreme lowness of his spirits, I recommended him to "take a little wine for his stomach's sake," and, when he was sufficiently re-established, to embrace the media-via, ni-jamais-ni-toujours plan--not to kill himself like a fool, and not to abstain like a ninny--in a word, to enjoy himself like a rational creature, and do as I did; for, don't think, Helen, that I'm a tippler; I'm nothing at all of the kind, and never was, and never shall be.