CURSE upon thy stars, Jack! How long wilt thou beat me about the head with thy musty citations from Nat Lee and thy troop of poetical divines? Thou hast driven me to motto-hunting for the comeliness of mine epistle, like the weekly scribblers. See, Jack, I have an adventure to tell thee! It is not the avenging Morden that hath flashed through the window, sword in hand, as in my frightful dream; nor hath the statue of the Commandant visited me, like Don Juan, that Rake of Spain; but a challenger came hither that is not akin to my beloved Miss. Dost remember a tall, fresh-coloured, cudgel-playing oaf that my Lady Bellaston led about with her—as maids lead apes in hell, though he more of an ape than she of a maid—’tis a year gone? This brawny-beefed chairman hath married a fortune and a delicious girl, you dog, Miss Sophia Western, of Somerset, and is now in train, I doubt not, to beget as goodly a tribe of chuckle-headed boys and whey-faced wenches as you shall see round an old squire’s tomb in a parish church. Wherefore does he not abide at this his appointed lawful husbandry, I marvel; but not a whit! Our cursed adventure hath spread from the _flippanti_ of both sexes down to the heathenish parts of Somerset; where it hath reached Madam Jones’s ears, and inflamed this pretty vixen with a desire to avenge Miss Harlowe on me, and by the cudgel of Mr. Jones, his Sophia having sent him up to town for no other purpose. De la Tour, my man, came to me yesterday morning with the tidings that the New Giant, as he supposes, waits on me to solicit the favour of my patronage. I am in the powdering closet, being bound for a rout, and cry, “Let the Giant in!” Then a heavy tread: and, looking up, what do I see but a shoulder-of-mutton fist at my nose, and lo! a Somerset tongue cries, “Lovelace, thou villain, thou shalt taste of this!” A man in a powdering closet cannot fight, even if he be a boxing glutton like your Figs and other gladiators of the Artillery Ground. Needs must I parley. “What,” says I, “what, the happy Mr. Jones from the West! What brings him here among the wicked, and how can the possessor of the beauteous Sophia be a moment from her charms?” “Take not her name,” cries my clod-hopper, “into thy perjured mouth. ’Tis herself sends me here to avenge the best, the most injured . . . ” Here he fell a-blubbering! Oh, Belford, the virtue of this world is a great discourager of repentance. “If Mr. Jones insists on the arbitrament of the sword . . . ” I was beginning—“Nay, none of thy Frenchified blades,” cries he, “come out of thy earth, thou stinking fox, and try conclusions with an English cudgel!” Belford, I am no cudgel-player, and I knew not well how to rid myself of this swasher.