"Oh!" said the traveller, while his young companion lifted his eyes; and I was again struck with their remarkable penetration and brilliancy. "London is the best place in the world for a lad of spirit. See life there,--'glass of fashion and mould of form.' Fond of the play, sir?" "I never saw one." "Possible!" cried the gentleman, dropping the handle of his knife, and bringing up the point horizontally; "then, young man," he added solemnly, "you have,--but I won't say what you have to see. I won't say,--no, not if you could cover this table with golden guineas, and exclaim, with the generous ardor so engaging in youth, 'Mr. Peacock, these are yours if you will only say what I have to see!'" I laughed outright. May I be forgiven for the boast, but I had the reputation at school of a pleasant laugh. The young man's face grew dark at the sound; he pushed back his plate and sighed. "Why," continued his friend, "my companion here, who, I suppose, is about your own age, he could tell you what a play is,--he could tell you what life is. He has viewed the mantiers of the town; 'perused the traders,' as the Swan poetically remarks. Have you not, my lad, eh?" Thus directly appealed to, the boy looked up with a smile of scorn on his lips,-- "Yes, I know what life is, and I say that life, like poverty, has strange bed-fellows. Ask me what life is now, and I say a melodrama; ask me what it is twenty years hence, and I shall say--" "A farce?" put in his comrade. "No, a tragedy,--or comedy as Moliere wrote it." "And how is that?" I asked, interested and somewhat surprised at the tone of my contemporary. "Where the play ends in the triumph of the wittiest rogue. My friend here has no chance!" "'Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley,' hem--yes, Hal Peacock may be witty, but he is no rogue." "This was not exactly my meaning," said the boy, dryly. "'A fico for your meaning,' as the Swan says.--Hallo, you sir! Bully Host, clear the table--fresh tumblers--hot water--sugar--lemon--and--The bottle's out! Smoke, sir?" and Mr. Peacock offered me a cigar. Upon my refusal, he carefully twirled round a very uninviting specimen of some fabulous havanna, moistened it all over, as a boa-constrictor may do the ox he prepares for deglutition, bit off one end, and lighting the other from a little machine for that purpose which he drew from his pocket, he was soon absorbed in a vigorous effort (which the damp inherent in the weed long resisted) to poison the surrounding atmosphere. Therewith the young gentleman, either from emulation or in self-defence, extracted from his own pouch a cigar-case of notable elegance,--being of velvet, embroidered apparently by some fair hand, for "From Juliet" was very legibly worked thereon,--selected a cigar of better appearance than that in favor with his comrade, and seemed quite as familiar with the tobacco as he had been with the brandy.