staple of the feast; and I fancy most of us managed to consume about a couple of dozen each. It may be that others exceeded that moderate allowance, but in neither eating nor drinking was there any sign of excess. There was a time when oysters and stout were connected with Bacchanalian orgies. That time, happily, has long passed, and instead we listened to oratory as we smoked the meditative cigar or the Lilliputian cigarette, or gazed with an admiring eye on the tasteful way in which the hall had been prepared for the occasion. Music also lent its charms. Colchester is a garrison town, and at present the Royal Munster Fusiliers hold the fort. It was their band that played on the occasion, with great applause. It was not pleasant to turn out of the hall, which had begun to grow additionally cheerful in consequence of the gas, and to make one’s way along the wet and deserted streets of the ancient town. I need not add that I was all the better for what I had eaten and heard. There are delicate questions, worthy of any abler intellect than mine to settle, as to the proper way of eating an oyster. According to some theories, you should take the Great Eastern to Burnham, get on board a fishing-smack, and gulp down the delicious bivalve as he comes fresh and juicy from his watery bed. Others there are who contend for the same operation on the River Colne; and I have met with low-minded people who say that no oyster eats so pleasantly as that purchased at a common street stall, as the vendor has less capital than the regular dealer, and thus lays in a fresher stock as he requires them. If I consult my old friend Sir Henry Thompson, the great authority in such matters, I read, “Oysters are in fact the first dish of dinner and not its precursor; the preface and not the possibly obtrusive advertisement.” “It is,” he remarks, “a single service of exquisite quality served with attendant graces.” Sir Henry evidently has never been to a Colchester oyster feast, or he would have had a word to say in its favour. “It is not worth going to,” said a gentleman to me one day. Yet when I entered the hall shortly after he was the first to come and shake hands with me, and on that dull, rainy day he had travelled many miles to be at the oyster feast. The fact is, in dull days one is glad of any excuse for going out and having a chat with one’s friends, and it does one good to hear bishops and Dissenting ministers, as they did at Colchester, talk in favour of Christian unity, or the local M.P.’s talk of national ditto, or the mayors of the leading Essex towns vindicate that local self-government which we all hold to be an important element in the preservation and expansion of our national life. III. A QUIET SUFFOLK TOWN.