But at length Beckett and Carpentier made their triumphal entry. Beckett first, quietly smiling, with eyes cast down, Carpentier debonair and lightly saluting the crowd with an elegant wave of the hand. After the pair had stripped and Dr. Johnson had pointed out that “the tenuity, the thin part” in Carpentier’s frame indicated greater lightness, if Beckett’s girth promised more solid resistance, Mr. Angle invited the company to preserve silence during the rounds and to abstain from smoking. To add a last touch to the solemnity of the moment, Carpentier’s supernumerary henchmen (some six or eight, over and above his trainer and seconds) came and knelt by us, in single file, in the alley between Block H and Block E, as though at worship. What then happened, in the twinkling of an eye, all the world now knows, and knows rather better than I knew myself at the moment, for I saw Beckett lying on his face in the ring without clearly distinguishing the decisive blow. While Carpentier was being carried round the ring on the shoulders of his friends, being kissed first by his trainer and then by ladies obligingly held up to the ring for the amiable purpose, I confess that I watched Beckett, and was pleased to see he had successfully resumed his quiet smile. As I carried my revered friend home to Bolt Court in a taximetric cabriolet, I remarked to him that Beckett’s defeat was a blow to our patriotic pride, whereupon he suddenly uttered, in a strong, determined tone, an apophthegm at which many will start:—“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel!” “And yet,” said Beauclerk, when I told him of this later, “he had not been kissed by Carpentier.” MY UNCLE TOBY PUZZLED “’Tis a pity,” cried my father, one winter’s night, after reading the account of the Shakespeare Memorial meeting—“’tis a pity,” cried my father, putting my mother’s thread-paper into the newspaper for a mark as he spoke,—“that truth, brother Toby, should shut herself up in such impregnable fastnesses, and be so obstinate as to surrender herself up sometimes only upon the closest siege.” The word siege, like a talismanic power, in my father’s metaphor, wafting back my uncle Toby’s fancy, quick as a note could follow the touch, he opened his ears. “And there was nothing to shame them in the truth, neither,” said my father, “seeing that they had many thousands of pounds to their credit. How could a bishop think there was danger in telling it?” “Lord bless us! Mr. Shandy,” cried my mother, “what is all this story about?” “About Shakespeare, my dear,” said my father. “He has been dead a hundred years ago,” replied my mother. My uncle Toby, who was no chronologer, whistled “Lillibullero.”