time, Flipfield gave him up for the day, and
had them removed. It was then that the
Long-lost gained the height of his popularity
with the company; for my own part, I felt
convinced that I loved him dearly. Flipfield's
dinners are perfect, and he is the easiest and
best of entertainers. Dinner went on brilliantly,
and the more the Long-lost didn't come, the
more comfortable we grew, and the more highly
we thought of him. Flipfield's own man (who
has a regard for me) was in the act of struggling
with an ignorant stipendiary, to wrest from him
the wooden leg of a Guinea-fowl which he was
pressing on my acceptance, and to substitute a
slice of the breast, when a ringing at the doorbell
suspended the strife. I looked round me,
and perceived the sudden pallor which I knew
my own visage revealed, reflected in the faces of
the company. Flipfield hurriedly excused
himself, went out, was absent for about a minute or
two, and then re-entered with the Long-lost.

I beg to say distinctly that if the stranger
had brought Mont Blanc with him, or had come
attended by a retinue of eternal snows, he could
not have chilled the circle to the marrow in a
more efficient manner. Embodied Failure sat
enthroned upon the Long-lost's brow, and
pervaded him to his Long-lost boots. In vain Mrs.
Flipfield senior, opening her arms, exclaimed,
"My Tom!" and pressed his nose against the
counterfeit presentment of his other parent. In
vain Miss Flipfield, in the first transports of
this re-union, showed him a dint upon her
maidenly cheek, and asked him if he remembered
when he did that with the bellows? We,
the bystanders, were overcome, but overcome
by the palpable, undisguisable, utter, and total
break-down of the Long-lost. Nothing he
could have done would have set him right with
us but his instant return to the Ganges. In
the very same moments it became established
that the feeling was reciprocal, and that the
Long-lost detested us. When a friend of the
family (not myself, upon my honour), wishing
to set things going again, asked him, while he
partook of soup—asked him with an amiability
of intention beyond all praise, but with a weakness
of execution open to defeat—what kind of
river he considered the Ganges, the Long-lost,
scowling at the friend of the family over his spoon,
as one of an abhorrent race, replied, "Why a river
of water, I suppose," and spooned his soup into
himself with a malignancy of hand and eye that
blighted the amiable questioner. Not an opinion
could be elicited from the Long-lost, in unison
with the sentiments of any individual present.
He contradicted Flipfield dead, before he had
eaten his salmon. He had no idea—or affected
to have no idea—that it was his brother's birthday,
and on the communication of that interesting
fact to him, merely wanted to make him out
four years older than he was. He was an
antipathetical being, with a peculiar power and gift
of treading on everybody's tenderest place.
They talk in America of a man's "Platform."
I should describe the Platform of the Long-lost
as a Platform composed of other people's corns,
on which he had stumped his way, with all his
might and main, to his present position. It is
needless to add that Flipfield's great birthday
went by the board, and that he was a wreck
when I pretended at parting to wish him many
happy returns of it.

There is another class of birthdays at which I
have so frequently assisted, that I may assume
such birthdays to be pretty well known to the
human race. My friend Mayday's birthday is
an example. The guests have no knowledge
of one another except on that one day in the
year, and are annually terrified for a week by
the prospect of meeting one another again.
There is a fiction among us that we have
uncommon reasons for being particularly lively
and spirited on the occasion, whereas deep
despondency is no phrase for the expression of
our feelings. But the wonderful feature of the
case is, that we are in tacit accordance to avoid
the subject—to keep it as far off as possible, as
long as possible—and to talk about anything else,
rather than the joyful event. I may even go so
far as to assert that there is a dumb compact
among us that we will pretend that it is NOT
Mayday's birthday. A mysterious and gloomy
Being, who is said to have gone to school with
Mayday, and who is so lank and lean that he
seriously impugns the Dietary of the establishment
at which they were jointly educated, always
leads us, as I may say, to the block, by laying
his grisly hand on a decanter and begging us to
fill our glasses. The devices and pretences that
I have seen put in practice to defer the fatal
moment, and to interpose between this man and
his purpose, are innumerable. I have known
desperate guests, when they saw the grisly hand
approaching the decanter, wildly to begin, without
any antecedent whatsoever, "That reminds
me——" and to plunge into long stories. When
at last the hand and the decanter come together,
a shudder, a palpable perceptible shudder, goes
round the table. We receive the reminder that
it is Mayday's birthday, as if it were the anniversary
of some profound disgrace he had undergone,
and we sought to comfort him. And when
we have drunk Mayday's health, and wished him
many happy returns, we are seized for some
moments with a ghastly blitheness, an unnatural
levity, as if we were in the first flushed reaction
of having undergone a surgical operation.

Birthdays of this species have a public as well
as a private phase. My "boyhood's home,"
Dullborough, presents a case in point. An
Immortal Somebody was wanted in Dullborough, to
dimple for a day the stagnant face of the
waters; he was rather wanted by Dullborough
generally, and much wanted by the principal
hotel-keeper. The County history was looked
up for a locally Immortal Somebody, but the
registered Dullborough worthies were all
Nobodies. In this state of things, it is hardly
necessary to record that Dullborough did what
every man does when he wants to write a book
or deliver a lecture, and is provided with all the
materials except a subject. It fell back upon
Shakespeare.