This was a sentiment that met my heartiest
concurrence, and I nodded in friendly recognition
to the speaker, and drank off my glass to
his health.

"Who can give us a song? I'll back his
reverence here to be a vocalist," cried Hammond.
And, sure enough, Dyke sang one of the national
melodies with great feeling and taste. Oxley
followed with something in less perfect taste,
and we all grew very jolly. Then there came
a broiled bone and some devilled kidneys, and
a warm brew which Hammond himself
concocted—a most insidious liquor, which had a
strong odour of lemons, and was compounded,
at the same time, of little else than rum and
sugar.

There is an adage that says "in vino veritas,"
which I shrewdly suspect to be a great fallacy;
at least, as regards my own case, I know it to be
totally inapplicable. I am, in my sober hours—
and I am proud to say that the exceptions from
such are of the rarest—one of the most veracious
of mortals; indeed, in my frank sincerity, I have
often given offence to those who like a courteous
hypocrisy better than an ungraceful truth.
Whenever, by any chance, it, has been my ill-fortune
to transgress these limits, there is no
bound to my imagination. There is nothing too
extravagant or too vainglorious for me to say
of myself. All the strange incidents of
romance that I have read, all the travellers' stories,
newspaper accidents, adventures by sea and land,
wonderful coincidences, unexpected turns of
fortune, I adapt to myself, and coolly relate them
as personal experiences. Listeners have afterwards
told me that I possess an amount of
consistence, a verisimilitude in these narratives
perfectly marvellous, and only to be accounted for
by supposing that I myself must, for the time
being, be the dupe of my own imagination.
Indeed, I am sure such must be the true
explanation of this curious fact. How, in any other
mode, explain the rash wagers, absurd and
impossible engagements I have contracted in such
moments, backing myself to leap twenty-three
feet on the level sward; to dive in six fathoms
water and fetch up Heaven knows what of shells
and marine curiosities from the bottom; to ride
the most unmanageable of horses, and, single-
handed and unarmed, to fight the fiercest bulldog
in England? Then, as to intellectual feats,
what have I not engaged to perform? Sums of
mental arithmetic; whole newspapers committed
to memory after one reading; verse compositions,
on any theme, in ten languages; and once,
a written contract to compose a whole opera,
with all the scores, within twenty-four hours.
To a nature thus strangely constituted, wine
was a perfect magic wand, transforming a poor,
weak, distrustful, modest man, into a hero;
and yet, even with such temptations, my excesses
were extremely rare and unfrequent. Are there
many, I would ask, that could resist the
passport to such a dreamland, with only the penalty
of a headache the next morning? Some one
would perhaps suggest that these were
enjoyments to pay forfeit on. Well, so they were;
but I must not anticipate. And now to my
tale.

To Hammond's brew there succeeded one by
Oxley, made after an American receipt, and
certainly both fragrant and insinuating, and then
came a concoction made by the priest, which he
called "Father Hosey's pride". It was made in
a bowl, and drunk out of lemon-rinds, ingeniously
fitted into the wine-glasses. I remember no
other particulars about it, though l can call to
mind much of the conversation that preceded it.
How I gave a long historical account of my
family, that we came originally from Corsica,
the name Potts being a corruption of Pozzo, and
that we were of the same stock as the celebrated
diplomatist Pozzo di Borgo. Our unclaimed
estates in the island were of fabulous value, but
in asserting my right to them I should accept
thirteen mortal duels, the arrears of a hundred and
odd years unscored off, in anticipation of which
I had at one time taken lessons from Angelo in
fencing, which led to the celebrated challenge
they might have read in Galignani, where I
offered to meet any swordsman in Europe for
ten thousand Napoleons, giving choice of the
weapon to my adversary. With a tear to the
memory of tne poor French colonel that I killed
at Sedan, I turned the conversation. Being in
France, I incidentally mentioned some anecdotes
of military life, and how l had invented the rifle
called after Minié's name, and, in a moment
of good nature, given that excellent fellow my
secret.

"I will say," said I, "that Minié has shown
more gratitude than some others nearer home,
but we'll talk of rifled cannon another time."

In an episode about bear-shooting, I
mentioned the Emperor of Russia, poor dear
Nicholas, and told how we had once exchanged
horses, mine being more strong-boned, and
a weight-carrier, his a light Caucasian mare,
of purest breed, "the dam of that creature
you may see below in the stable now," said
I, carelessly. " 'Come and see me one of
these days, Potts,' said he, in parting; 'come
and pass a week with me at Constantinople.'
This was the first intimation he had ever
given of his project against Turkey, and when
I told it to the Duke of Wellington, his
remark was a muttered 'Strange fellow, Potts
—knows everything!' though he made no reply
to me at the time."

It was somewhere about this period that the
priest began with what struck me as an attempt
to outdo me as a story-teller, an effort I should
have treated with the most contemptuous
indifference but for the amount ot attention bestowed
on him by the others. Nor was this all, but
actually I perceived that a kind of rivalry was
to be established, so that we were
pitted directly against each other. Amongst
the other self-delusions of such moments was
the profound conviction I entertained that I was
master of all games of skill and address, superior
to Major A. at whist, and able to give Staunton
a pawn and the move at chess. The priest was
just as vainglorious. ''He'd like to see the man