"Help yourself," replied the young man peevishly, as he sat up, looked disdainfully at the viands, and after a long pause, tasted first one, then the other, with many shrugs of the shoulders and muttered exclamations of discontent. Suddenly he looked up and called for brandy; and to my surprise, and I fear admiration, he drank nearly half a tumblerful of that poison undiluted, with a composure that spoke of habitual use. "Wrong!" said his companion, drawing the bottle to himself, and mixing the alcohol in careful proportions with water. "Wrong! coats of stomach soon wear out, with that kind of clothes' brush. Better stick to 'the yeasty foam' as sweet Will says. That young gentleman sets you a good example," and therewith the speaker nodded at me familiarly. Inexperienced as I was, I surmised at once that it was his intention to make acquaintance with the neighbour thus saluted. I was not deceived. "Any thing to tempt _you_, sir?" asked this social personage after a short pause, and describing a semicircle with the point of his knife. "I thank you, sir, but I have dined." "What then? 'Break out into a second course of mischief,' as the swan recommends--swan of Avon, sir! No? 'Well then, I charge you with this cup of sack.' Are you going far, if I may take the liberty to ask?" "To London, when I can get there!" "Oh!" said the traveller--while his young companion lifted his eyes; and I was again struck with their remarkable penetration and brilliancy. "London is the best place in the world for a lad of spirit. See life there; 'glass of fashion and mould of form.' Fond of the play, sir?" "I never saw one!" "Possible!" cried the gentleman, dropping the handle of his knife, and bringing up the point horizontally: "then, young man," he added solemnly, "you have, but I won't say what you have to see. I won't say--no, not if you could cover this table with golden guineas, and exclaim with the generous ardour so engaging in youth 'Mr Peacock, these are yours, if you will only say what I have to see!'" I laughed outright--may I be forgiven for the boast, but I had the reputation at school of a pleasant laugh. The young man's face grew dark at the sound: he pushed back his plate and sighed. "Why," continued his friend, "my companion here, who I suppose is about your own age, _he_ could tell you what a play is! he could tell you what life is. He has viewed the manners of the town: 'perused the traders,' as the swan poetically remarks. Have you not, my lad, eh?" Thus directly appealed to, the boy looked up with a smile of scorn on his lips. "Yes, I know what life is, and I say that life, like poverty, has strange bedfellows. Ask me what life is now, and I say a melodrama; ask me what it is twenty years hence, and I shall say--" "A farce?" put in his comrade. "No, a tragedy--or comedy as Congreve wrote it." "And how is that?" I asked, interested and somewhat surprised at the tone of my contemporary.