state-dinner on a certain day, to which the
gentleman with whom I was staying was
invited. He was on the point of leaving his
house in his little Norwegian carriole, and we
were on the point of sitting down to dinner,
when a man rode up in hot haste—a servant
from the high sheriff's came to beg for our
joint off the spit. Fish, game, poultry—
they had all the delicacies of their own
land; but the butcher from the nearest
market town had failed them, and at the
last moment they had to send off a groom
a-begging to their neighbours. My
relation departed ignorant of our dinnerless
state; but he came back in great delight
with his party. After the soup and fish had
been removed, there had been a long pause
(the joint had got cold on its ride, and had to
be re-warmed); a message was brought to
the host, who had immediately confided his
perplexity to his guests, and put it to the
vote whether they would wait for the joint,
or have the order of the courses changed, and
eat the third before the second. Every one
had enjoyed the merry dilemma; the ice was
broken, and all went on pleasantly and easily
in a party where there was rather a
heterogeneous mixture of politics and opinions.
Dinner parties in those days and in that part
of Wales were somewhat regulated by the
arrival of the little sailing vessels, which
having discharged their cargo at Bristol or
Liverpool, brought back commissioned
purchases for the different families. A chest of
oranges for Mr. Williams, or Mr. Wynn,
was a sure signal that before many days were
over, Mr. Williams or Mr. Wynn would
give a dinner party; strike while the iron
was hot; eat while the oranges were fresh.
A man rode round to all the different houses
when any farmer planned such a mighty
event as killing a cow, to ask what part each
family would take. Visiting acquaintances
lived ten or twelve miles from each other,
separated by bad and hilly roads; the moon
had always to be consulted before issuing
invitations; and then the mode of proceeding
was usually something like this. The invited
friends came to dinner at half-past five or six;
these were always those from the greatest
distance,—the nearer neighbours came later
on in the evening. After the gentlemen had
left the dining-room, it was cleared for
dancing. The fragments of the dinner,
prepared by ready cooks, served for supper;
tea was ready sometime towards one or two,
and the dancers went merrily on till a seven
or eight o'clock breakfast, after which they
rode or drove home by broad daylight. I
was never at one of these meetings, although
staying in a house from which many went;
I was considered too young; but from what
I heard they were really excessively pleasant,
sociable gatherings, although not quite
entitled to be classed with Madame de Sablé's
salons.

To return to the fact that a slightly gipsy
and impromptu character, either in the hostess
or in the arrangements, or in the amusements,
adds a piquancy to the charm: let any
one remember the agreeable private teas that
go on in many houses about five o'clock. I
remember those in one house particularly, as
remarkably illustrating what I am trying to
prove. These teas were held in a large
dismantled school-room, and a superannuated
school-room is usually the most doleful
chamber imaginable. I never saw this by
full daylight, I only know that it was lofty
and large, that we went to it through a long
gallery library, through which we never
passed at any other time, the school-room
having been accessible to the children in
former days by a private staircase—that great
branches of trees swept against the windows
with a long plaintive moan, as if tortured by
the wind,—that below in the stable-yard two
Irish stag-hounds sent up their musical bays
to mingle with the outlandish Spanish which
a parrot in the room continually talked out
of the darkness in which its perch was placed,
—that the walls of the room seemed to recede
as in a dream, and, instead of them, the
flickering firelight painted tropical forests or
Norwegian fiords, according to the will of our
talkers. I know this tea was nominally
private to the ladies, but that all the gentlemen
strayed in most punctually by accident,
—that the fire was always in that state when
I somebody had to poke with the hard blows
of despair, and somebody else to fetch in logs
of wood from the basket outside, and somebody
else to unload his pockets of fir-bobs,
which last were always efficacious, and threw
beautiful dancing lights far and wide. And
then there was a black kettle, long ago too
old for kitchen use, that leaked, and ran, and
sputtered against the blue and sulphur-
coloured flames, and did everything that was
improper, but the water out of which made
the best tea in the world, which we drank
out of unmatched cups, the relics of several
school-room sets. We ate thick bread and
butter in the darkness with a vigour of
appetite which had quite disappeared at the
well-lighted eight o'clock dinner. Who eat
it I don't know, for we stole from our places
round the fireside to the tea-table in
comparative darkness in the twilight near the
window, and helped ourselves, and came back
on tiptoe to hear one of the party tell of wild
enchanted spicy islands in the Eastern
Archipelago, or buried cities in farthest Mexico;
he used to look into the fire, and draw, and
paint with words in a manner perfectly
marvellous, and with an art which he had
quite lost at the formal dinner-time. Our
host was scientific; a name of high repute;
he too told us of wonderful discoveries, strange
surmises, glimpses into something far away
and utterly dream-like. His son had been
in Norway, fishing; then, when he sat all
splashed with hunting, he too could tell ot
adventures in a natural racy way. The girls,