“‘Come in here,’ says he, seizing my elbow, and in an instant I found myself deceived, swindled, jostled in among the wrong set. A parcel of puritanical looking dogs, sitting cheek by jowl, with long gowns, play actors, medical students, penny-a-liners, seedy old boys and silly school girls. I suppose they took me for a Mormon or a Shaker, or perhaps a clown, and dragged me in, to add to the novelty of the collection. But Scotch manners wouldn’t allow me to be rude, so I said, very politely, to the tall gentleman, if _that_ is whisky-punch you have on the stove, I’ll take a tumbler of it. Heavens! you should have heard the yell that went up, and seen the horrible faces; so seeing the way the wind set, I gave one or two of them a knock over the skull with ebony—bestowed my parting benediction upon the whole company—ladies excepted—and came at once to head-quarters.” Now, Jeremy, I don’t know what you may think of this business, but I say I have been silent long enough under various aggressions, and hereafter, I take the cudgel and trounce any son of a gun who poaches on my manor. Why do you know that people have the audacity to say that theirs is the _oldest_ magazine, when the Casket, which we bought, and on which Graham was based, started in 1826, and had its colored fashions and wood engravings printed on tinted paper long before any of them opened their eyes. The mezzotints I was the first to put to magazine use on a large scale; and Burton’s Magazine, which was incorporated with this, gave the first that Sartain ever did for a magazine of large circulation; and yet these young fellows, with the down yet upon their chins, affect the experience of years, and learnedly talk about teaching their grandfather how to snuff. I care nothing about this, but that it has gone far enough; and they will after a while begin to believe their own stories—a bit of self-deception that it is a pity they should be subjected to.