A great feast is evidently toward, for with those white-aproned waiters are gay serving men, wearing on their shoulders the city-badge.

The lord mayor is giving a dinner to certain gentlemen of the Leicester house party, who are interested in foreign discoveries; and what place so fit for such a feast as the Pelican itself?
Look at the men all round; a nobler company you will seldom see.
Especially too, if you be Americans, look at their faces, and reverence them; for to them and to their wisdom you owe the existence of your mighty fatherland.
At the head of the table sits the lord mayor; whom all readers will recognize at once, for he is none other than that famous Sir Edward Osborne, clothworker, and ancestor of the dukes of Leeds, whose romance now-a-days is in every one's hands.

He is aged, but not changed, since he leaped from the window upon London Bridge into the roaring tide below, to rescue the infant who is now his wife.

The chivalry and promptitude of the 'prentice boy have grown and hardened into the thoughtful daring of the wealthy merchant adventurer.

There he sits, a right kingly man, with my lord Earl of Cumberland on his right hand, and Walter Raleigh on his left; the three talk together in a low voice on the chance of there being vast and rich countries still undiscovered between Florida and the River of Canada.