I made the round of the bottles, first separate (to say I had done it), and then tried two of ’em as half-and-half, then t’other two. Altogether, I passed a pleasant evenin, but with a tendency to feel muddled, until I considered it good manners to get up and say: “Mr. Chops, the best of friends must part. I thank you for the wariety of foreign drains you have stood so ’ansome. I looks towards you in red wine, and I takes my leave.” Mr. Chops replied: “If you’ll just hitch me out of this over your right arm, Magsman, and carry me down stairs, I’ll see you out.” I said I couldn’t think of such a thing, but he would have it, so I lifted him off his throne. He smelt strong of Madeary, and I couldn’t help thinking, as I carried him down, that it was like carrying a large bottle full of wine, with a rayther ugly stopper, a good deal out of proportion. When I set him on the door-mat in the hall, he kept me close to him by holding on to my coat-collar, and he whispers:-- “I ain’t ’appy, Magsman.” “What’s on your mind, Mr. Chops?” “They don’t use me well. They ain’t graceful to me. They puts me on the mantel-piece when I won’t have in more Champagne-wine, and they locks me in the sideboard when I won’t give up my property.” “Git rid of ’em, Mr. Chops.” “I can’t. We’re in society together, and what would society say?” “Come out of society,” says I. “I can’t. You don’t know what you’re talking about. When you have once got into society, you mustn’t come out of it.” “Then, if you’ll excuse the freedom, Mr. Chops,” was my remark, shaking my ed grave, “I think it’s a pity you ever went in.” Mr. Chops shook that deep Ed of his to a surprisin extent, and slapped it half a dozen times with his hand, and with more wice than I thought were in him. Then he says: “You’re a good feller, but you don’t understand. Good night, go long. Magsman, the little man will now walk three times around the Cairawan, and retire behind the curtain.” The last I see of him on that occasion was his tryin, on the extremest werge of insensibility, to climb up the stairs, one by one, with his hands and knees. They’d have been much too steep for him if he had been sober; but he wouldn’t be helped. It warn’t long after that, that I read in the newspaper of Mr. Chops’s being presented at court. It was printed: “It will be recollected”--and I’ve noticed in my life that it is sure to be printed that it _will_ be recollected whenever it won’t--“that Mr. Chops is the individual of small stature whose brilliant success in the last State Lottery attracted so much attention.” “Well,” I said to myself, “such is life! He has been and done it in earnest at last! He has astonished George the Fourth!” On account of which I had that canvas new painted, him with a bag of money in his hand, a presentin it to George the Fourth, and a lady in ostrich feathers fallin in love with him in a bagwig, sword, and buckles correct.