Delightful Grassby, what joyous hours have rolled away there! Well content should I have been to have remained a welcome guest there for ever, if I could but have secured the privilege of dining as sparingly as I liked, and of taking just as few glasses of the old ale or the old port as suited _me_, rather than my friend. But with the old-fashioned notions of hospitality prevalent there, the comfort of "enough" was out of the question. It was a word never used at the squire's table. If you desired to taste a second or a third dish, good bountiful Mrs. N. sent you a second or third _dinner_; and not to eat _all_ that was placed before you, though already long past the point where appetite and desire cease, was to break through every principle of their establishment, and violate all their simple ideas of etiquette and good breeding. If you left the remaining wing of the turkey, they would be wretched for the rest of the day--"You didn't like it," "you were not comfortable." After a year or two, Mrs. N. did so far relax, and mingle mercy with her hospitality, as to say when placing two ribs of roast beef upon one's plate, "I hope if there's more than you wish for, that you won't scruple to leave it." The reader will be lucky if he can secure as much indulgence as this, at many country-houses where old fashions and principles yet prevail, and my Lady Bountiful reigns supreme. Consequences the most alarming sometimes ensued from this sense of the necessity of consuming whatsoever was placed before you by your host. A travelling acquaintance of the squire's (one Mr. Joseph Miller) paid him a flying visit one morning; and as he could not possibly stay one moment, and insisted upon not taking any refreshment at all, he was let off with a tankard of ale, and some of the finest cheese in the county. The traveller threw upward a look of despair as he saw about half a magnificent "Cheshire" introduced to his notice; but as time was precious, he went to work, and ate with vigour for half-an-hour, when the postboy knocked to remind him of the necessity of completing that stage in a given time, or the journey would be fruitless. The answer returned was, that the traveller "would come as soon as he could;" and upon the cheese he fell again with increased energy. Another thirty minutes elapsed, when he paused to gaze, with evident symptoms of exhaustion, on the semicircle of Cheshire, not yet visibly diminished; a second rap now summoned him, but his reply was an anxious, hopeless look, and the faint ejaculation "Wait!" The attack on the cheese was once more renewed, but by no means fiercely. "Gad," cried the squire, at last, "had I guessed you could ha' staid so long, we'd a hastened dinner a bit." "So long!" exclaimed the traveller in a tone of despair; "let me tell you such a piece of cheese as that isn't to be got through so soon as you think for!"