"That's all right, Mr. Taylor, you just sit right down in your chair--it's a nice chair; you just sit right down, now won't you?" said Huddesley still soothingly--too soothingly by far to suit J. B. "Don't you give me any impudence," he said darkly. He sat down surveying the assembly with scorn shading into pity. _He_ wasn't drunk, anyhow. But now Doctor Vardaman had risen in his place at the head of the table, and was asking silence at the top of his lungs--not the best way in the world of getting it, to the mind of a disinterested onlooker, but, as nobody was so far gone yet as not to heed the host of the evening, he was finally obeyed, after Teddy, under the mistaken impression that he was being called on to give his justly famous rendition of the farmer about to kill a turkey, had been quelled. "Gentlemen," said the doctor, casting a look of some anxiety over his table-full, "let us not forget, that, however much we may be enjoying the present hour--I speak for myself"--here a number of voices assured him heartily, "So are we! You bet!" and so on--"I say, gentlemen, we must not forget that time is passing, and we are due for the entertainment of our friends at nine o'clock. It would never do, I think, to keep the ladies waiting. And, having their convenience in view, I propose that we drink a final glass--" said the doctor, unable to avoid a slight stress on the adjective--"a _final_ glass to the success of the performance and adjourn. Reversing what seems to have been the practice of Scriptural times, I will offer you a very rare and choice old vintage--you will pardon the conceit that calls attention to its excellence--a wine that was laid down by my father, gentlemen, in eighteen-fifteen, the year of the battle of New Orleans, the Waterloo year, and, as it happens, the year of my birth. He obtained it--for it has its history--of a Dutch merchant in Cadiz, and we have since called it, not knowing in truth what its real name should be, Mynheer Van der Cuyp's wine. Huddesley----" Here Huddesley stepped forward, and set before the doctor with something of a flourish two thick black bottles, dusty as to the shoulders, with the corks drawn, and a tray of the smallest variety of glasses--rather miserly provision, it might appear, for such a company, but Doctor Vardaman, not without considerable show of embarrassment, proceeded to explain: "I--I find myself obliged to warn you, gentlemen, inhospitable as it seems, that Mynheer Van der Cuyp's wine, what with age and the richness of its ingredients, is of an unexampled potency. It is at once smooth and heady, and--and I would not have you taken at unawares. In short, boys," he added earnestly, abandoning his formal manner, "it's the very deuce to go to one's head, and you all have to be careful. Huddesley----" Again that invaluable person began to circulate.