64 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. 
feel comfortable; blit it was in tlie neighbourhood of 
my waistcoat, not my head, I suffered. “ I am not well, 
but I will not out,” I soliloquized, with Lepidus* 
— u Bog fioi to irrepov” I would have added, had I dared. 
Still the neck of the banquet was broken—Fitzgerald’s 
chair was not yet empty,—could we hold out perhaps 
a quarter of an hour longer, our reputation was estab¬ 
lished; guess then my horror, when the Doctor, shouting 
his favourite dogma, by way of battle-cry, “ Si trigintis 
guttis, morbum curare velis, erras,” gave the signal for 
an unexpected onslaught, and the twenty guests poured 
down on me in succession. I really thought I should 
have run away from the house; but the true family 
blood, I suppose, began to show itself, and with a 
calmness almost frightful, I received them one by one. 
After this began the public toasts. 
Although up to this time I had kept a certain 
portion of my wits about me, the subsequent hours of 
the entertainment became thenceforth enveloped in a 
dreamy mystery. I can perfectly recal the look of the 
sheaf of glasses that stood before me, six in number; 
I could draw the pattern of each; I remember feeling 
* Antony and Cleopatra. 
