Our Englishman thought the dinner hardly worth so much dressing for. The dishes, so far as he had an opportunity of judging, were tolerably cooked; but their number was not at all proportionate to that of the guests; in short, it was a decided case of short commons, and the waiters were scarce to match. There were but two parties well attended to. One was the family of an old gentleman from the South, who was part owner of the building, and who, besides this advantage, enjoyed the privilege of letting his daughter monopolize the piano of the public parlor half the day, to sing Italian _arias_ shockingly out of tune, much to the disgust of the boarders generally, and especially of the dancing set, who were continually wanting the instrument themselves for polking purposes. The other was----the reporters of _The Sewer_; who had a choice collection of dishes and waiters always at their command. To be sure they had their end of the table to themselves, too, for not a person sat within three chairs of them on either side; but this they, no doubt, accepted as a complimentary acknowledgment of their formidable reputation. Every one else was famished. The married women grumbled, and scolded their husbands--those convenient scapegoats of all responsibility; the young ladies tried to look very sentimental, and above all such vulgar anxiety as that of meat and drink, but only succeeded in looking very cross; the men swore in various dialects at the waiters whenever they could catch them flying, and the waiters being used to it didn't mind it; and Ashburner, as a recollection of a former conversation flitted across his mind, could not help letting off a _tu quoque_ at his friend. "I say, Benson," quoth he, "is this one of the hotels that are so much better than ours, and that our people ought to take a lesson from?" Harry looked half-a-dozen bowie-knives at him. Besides the natural irritation produced by hunger, his wife and sister-in-law had been whipping him over each other's shoulders for the last half-hour, and now this last remark made him ready to boil over. For a few seconds his face wore an expression positively dangerous, but in another moment the ridiculous side of the case struck him. With a good-humored laugh he called for some wine--the only thing one was sure to get, as it was an extra, and a pretty expensive one, too, on the hills--and they drowned their hunger in a bumper of tolerable champagne.