The favorite haunt of my beer-drinking friends at this period was a smallish room,—you could not have called it a saloon,—a regular nest of a place, situated, not to be too explicit, not very far from, say Fourth Street. Our little nook stood alone in that part of the city, and, being so isolated in an exceedingly quiet neighborhood, it met exactly the wants of the jovial though orderly set of young professional men who, with the honest Teutons of the vicinage, frequented it. Well, on the occasion to which I have referred, half a dozen of us were grouped around a table, and were unusually merry and bright. Our doctor’s new word had been hailed as a real acquisition, in honor of which there was some sparkling of wit, and more of beer,—a happy saying being as real a provocative of thirst as a pretzel,—and, moreover, there had arisen between him and a young and promising philologist, lately graduated at the university, and since become a distinguished professor in the land, a philologico-anatomical, serio-comical discussion, in which the philologian maintained that it was hopeless for American to emulate German youth in this matter of drinking beer, while at the same time maintaining a voluntary suppression of the peristaltic action of the œsophagus, for the very simple reason that the throat of the German, incessantly opened wide in pronouncing the gutturals of his language, and hardened by the passage of these rough sounds, becomes in process of time an open pipe, a clear, firm tube,—in a word, a regular rat-hole of a throat, such as no English-speaking youth might reasonably aspire to. The medical man, I remember, came back at him with the quick smile of one who knows, and asked him if he did not confound the larynx with the œsophagus. “I do,” broke in a young lawyer. “You do what?” “I confound the larynxes and œsophagusses of both of you. Mine are growing thirsty. I say, boys, let’s suppress ’em both. Here, fünf bier!” The mild Teuton behind the bar obeyed the order with a smile. He was never so well pleased as when a debate arose among us, sure that every flash of wit, every stroke of humor, would be followed by a call for beers all round. I don’t think we ever drank more than we did on that evening (I really believe the beer was better then than now); and just as we were in the midst of one of our highest bursts of hilarity the door opened behind me. “Hello!” said the doctor, in a whisper; “there’s our grenadier!” Turning, I saw Don Miff standing by the counter, exchanging in the German language a few commonplaces (as I supposed) with the dispenser of beer. “Who is he? Where did you ever see him before?” I asked.