itself was on the chimney-piece; restless married
rakes, who were desperately afraid of waking
up their wives when they left us, were walking
to and fro absently, and crunching knobs of
loaf-sugar under foot at every step; Mr. Bigg
was standing, with his fourth cigar in his mouth,
before the fire; one of his hands was in the
tumbled bosom of his shirt, the other was grasping
mine, while he pathetically appointed me his
literary executor, and generously bequeathed
to me his great discovery of the authorship of
Junius's Letters. Upon the whole, Mr. Bigg is
the most incorrigible bachelor on record in the
annals of the Bedroom; he has consumed more
candles, ordered more footmen's trays, seen more
early daylight, and produced more pale faces
among the gentlemen at breakfast time, than any
other single visitor at Coolcup House.

The next bachelor in the order of succession,
and the completest contrast conceivable to Mr.
Bigg, is Mr. Jollins. He is, perhaps, the most
miserable-looking little man that ever tottered
under the form of humanity. Wear what clothes
he may, he invariably looks shabby in them.
He is the victim of perpetual accidents and
perpetual ill-health; and the Bachelor Bedroom,
when he inhabits it, is turned into a doctor's
shop, and bristles all over with bottles and pills.
Mr. Jollins's personal tribute to the hospitalities
of Coolcup House is always paid in the same
singularly unsatisfactory manner to his host.
On one day in the week, he gorges himself gaily
with food and drink, and soars into the seventh
heaven of convivial beatitude. On the other
six, he is invariably ill in consequence, is reduced
to the utmost rigours of starvation and
physic, sinks into the lowest depths of depression,
and takes the bitterest imaginable views of
human life. Hardly a single accident has happened
at Coolcup House in which he has not
been personally and chiefly concerned; hardly
a single malady can occur to the human frame
the ravages of which he has not practically exemplified
in his own person under Sir John's
roof. If any one guest, in the fruit season,
terrifies the rest by writhing under the internal
penalties in such cases made and provided by
the laws of nature, it is Mr. Jollins. If any one
tumbles up-stairs, or down-stairs, or off a horse,
or out of a dog-cart, it is Mr. Jollins. If you
want a case of sprained ankle, a case of suppressed
gout, a case of complicated earache,
toothache, headache, and sore-throat, all in one,
a case of liver, a case of chest, a case of nerves,
or a case of low fever, go to Coolcup House
while Mr. Jollins is staying there, and he will
supply you, on demand, at the shortest notice
and to any extent. It is conjectured by the
intimate friends of this extremely wretched
bachelor, that he has but two sources of consolation
to draw on, as a set-off against his innumerable
troubles. The first is the luxury of
twisting his nose on one side, and stopping up
his air-passages and Eustachian tubes with inconceivably
large quantities of strong snuff. The
second is the oleaginous gratification of incessantly
anointing his miserable little beard and
mustachios with cheap bear's-grease, which
always turns rancid on the premises before he
has half done with it. When Mr. Jollins gives
a party in the Bachelor Bedroom, his guests
have the unexpected pleasure of seeing him take
his physic, and hearing him describe his maladies
and recount his accidents. In other respects,
the moral influence of the Bedroom over the
characters of those who occupy it, which exhibits
Mr. Bigg in the unexpected literary aspect
of a commentator on Junius, is found to tempt
Mr. Jollins into betraying a horrible triumph
and interest in the maladies of others, of which
nobody would suspect him in the general society
of the house.

"I noticed you, after dinner to-day," says
this invalid bachelor, on such occasions, to any
one of the Bedroom guests who may be rash
enough to complain of the slightest uneasiness
in his presence; " I saw the corners of your
mouth get green, and the whites of your eyes
look yellow. You have got a pain here," says
Mr. Jollins, gaily indicating the place to which
he refers on his own shattered frame, with an
appearance of extreme relish—" a pain here, and
a sensation like having a cannon ball inside you,
there. You will be parched with thirst and racked
with fidgets all to-night; and to-morrow morning
you will get up with a splitting headache, and a
dark brown tongue, and another cannon-ball in
your inside. My dear fellow, I'm a veteran at
this sort of thing; and I know exactly the state
you will be in next week, and the week after,
and when you will have to try the sea-side, and
how many pounds' weight you will lose, to a
dead certainty, before you can expect to get
over this attack. He's congested, you know,"
continues Mr. Jollins, addressing himself confidentially
to the company in general, " congested
—I mean as to his poor unfortunate liver. A
nasty thing, gentlemen—ah, yes, yes, yes, a
long, tiresome, wearing, nasty thing, I can tell
you."

Thus, while Mr. Bigg always astonishes the
Bedroom guests on the subject of Junius, Mr.
Jollins always alarms them on the subject of
themselves. Mr. Smart, the next, and third
bachelor, placed in a similar situation, displays
himself under a more agreeable aspect, and
makes the convivial society that surrounds him,
for the night at least, supremely happy.

On the first day of his arrival at Coolcup
House, Mr. Smart deceived us all. When he
was first presented to us, we were deeply impressed
by the serene solemnity of this gentleman's
voice, look, manner, and costume. He
was as carefully dressed as Mr. Bigg himself,
but on totally different principles. Mr. Smart
was fearfully and wonderfully gentlemanly in his
avoidance of anything approaching to bright
colour on any part of his body. Quakerish
drabs and greys clothed him in the morning.
Dismal black, unrelieved by an atom of jewellery,
undisturbed even by so much as a flower in his
button-hole, encased him grimly in the evening.
He moved about the room and the garden with
a ghostly and solemn stalk. When the ladies