AMONG the deaths in our obituary -- or this month, I observe with "At his cottage oh road, Captain Ja." The name and attribution are on enough; but a feeling like reproach persuades me, that this could have been no other in fact than my dear old friend, who some five-and-twenty years ago rented a te, which he leased to dignify with the appellation here used, about a mile from Westbreen. Alack, how good men, and the good turns they do us, slide out of memory, and are recalled but by the surprise of some such sad memento as that whiow lies before us!
He whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer, with a wife and two grown-up daughters, whom he maintained with the port and notions of gentlewomen upon that slender professional allowance. ely girls they were too.
And was I in danger of fetting this man ? -- his cheerful suppers -- the one of hospitality, when first you set your foot itage -- the anxious ministerings about you, where little or nothing (God knows) was to be ministered. -- Altheas horn in a poor platter -- the power of self-entment, by which, in his magnifit wishes to eain you, he multiplied his means to bounties.
You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what seemed a bare scrag -- cold savings from the fone meal -- remnant hardly suffit to send a mendit from the door tented. But in the copious will -- the revelling imagination of your host -- the "mind, the mind, Master Shallow," whole beeves were spread before you -- hebs -- no end appeared to the profusion.
It was the widows cruse -- the loaves and fishes; carving could not lessen nor helping diminish it -- the stamina were left -- the elemental boill flourished, divested of its acts.
"Let us live while we ," methinks I hear the open-handed creature exclaim; "while we have, let us not want," "here is plenty left;" "want for nothing " -- with many more such hospitable sayings, the spurs of appetite, and old itants of smoaking boards, a-oppressed chargers. Then sliding a slender ratio of Single Gloucester upon his wifes plate, or the daughters, he would vey the rema rind into his own, with a merry quirk of "the he bone," &c., and declaring that he universally preferred the outside. For we had our table distins, you are to know, and some of us in a manner sate above the salt. his guest uests dreamed of tasting flesh luxuries at night, the fragments were vere hospitibus sacra. But of ohing or ahere was always enough, and leavings: only he would sometimes finish the remainder crust, to show that he wished no savings.
Wine he had none; nor, except on very rare occasions, spirits; but the sensation of wine was there. Some thin kind of ale I remember -- " British beverage," he would say! "Push about, my boys;" "Drink to your sweethearts, girls." At every meagre draught a toast must ensue, or a song. All the forms of good liquor were there, with none of the effects wanting. Shut your eyes, and you would swear a capacious bowl of punch was foaming in the tre, with beams of generous Port or Madeira radiating to it from each of the table ers. You got flustered, without knowing wheipsy upon words; and reeled uhe of his unperf Baalian encements.
We had our songs -- " Why, Soldiers, Why " -- and the "British Grenadiers " -- in which last we were all obliged to bear chorus. Both the daughters sang. Their proficy was a nightly theme -- the masters he had given them -- the "no-expence" which he spared to aplish them in a sce "so necessary to yo