116 
A NIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT. 
19, 20 March. 
England, snuff: but in both these arts, unfortunately, I was equally 
deficient. 
This tutor, then, as soon as he was in bed, placed the candle by 
his side, as I at first thought and hoped, to extinguish it, that I might 
be left to close my eyes for that sleep which nature demanded after 
two days of fatigue with little intermediate rest. But finding that 
the light still remained, I turned my head towards it, and, to my 
double mortification, beheld the meester lying very quietly, with a 
short crooked German pipe hanging from one corner of his mouth, 
while from the other, arose clouds of smoke rapidly following each 
other, till the room was filled with the fume of tobacco, and myself 
almost suffocated. 
At length when that pipe was finished, I had some little respite, 
but it was only while he was occupied in filling it again. In this 
interval, finding that I was not asleep, a circumstance not much to 
be wondered at, he began to relate to me some of his adventures in 
foreign parts ; and these reminiscences afibrded him so much satis- 
faction, that he allowed himself to talk and smoke in alternate fits, 
so that the second pipe, unfortunately, lasted twice as long as the 
first. But, as it would ill become a guest so hospitably received, to 
interrupt his entertainers' enjoyments, I endured it all with perfect 
patience till the last ; though, at an hour when most mortals desire 
to be ' lulled into sweet oblivion,' his candle, his pipe, and his con- 
versation, kept three of my senses in a state of continued irritatioil. 
By degrees the smoking became fainter ; the anecdotes of 
Malacca, Batavia, and Moccha, were at length all exhausted ; he 
stretched forth his arm to put out the candle ; and bade me Good- 
night. But the long-wished-for hour of sleep was not yet come ; 
and it now fell to his turn to be annoyed. Scarcely had we begun 
to doze, when repeated claps of the most violent thunder, roused 
us again ; and flashes of lightning glaring through the window, gave 
us opportunities of beholding each other once more. 
In a few minutes after this, the sound of the rain out of doors, 
pouring down in torrents, made me, notwithstanding the tobacco 
smoke, consider myself fortunate in being at such a time under the 
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