1. Waking in a bitter winter morning, with the recollection that you are immediately to get up by candle light, out of your snug warm bed, to shiver our to school, through the snow, for the purpose of being flogged as soon as you arrive.

2. Seeing the boy who is next above you flogged for a repetition which you know you cannot say even half as well as he did.

3. At cricket---after a long and hard service of watching out---bowled out at the first ball.---Likewise, cricket on very sloppy ground, so that your hard ball presently becomes muddy, sappy, and rotten:---a jarring bat.---a right hand bat for a left handed player.---a bat vice stumps.

4. Winding up a top badly grooved, so that the string bunches down over the peg; and, on your attempt to peg it down into the ring---:volat vi fervidus axis::---i.e. it flies into the eye of a play fellow.

5. Your hoop breaking, and then trundling lame, and perpetually tripping you up, as you boggle along with it.---the other boys, with good hoops, leaving you miles behind.

6. The stocking perpetually coming down, as you run, and bagging below the shoe, so as to be trampled in the dirt, (all, by and bye, to be snugly buttoned to your flesh,) and throw you down:---no garters, except twine, which you are, at last, obliged to use, though it cuts to the bone.

7. Being obliged to take a severe licking from a boy twice as big, but hot half so brave, as yourself;---then flogged for fighting because you, at first, aimed one blow, which however did not reach the long armed rascal.

8. At dinner the joint lasting only as low down as to the boy immediately above you:---you are too stout to eat bread, and so go starved and broken hearted, into school.

9. Fagging for a niggardly glutton, who does not leave you even the scraps of what you have stolen and dressed for him.

10. Staying in on a whole holiday, for another boy’s fault, falsely charged upon yourself:---very fine day; and the distant noise of all the other boys at play continually in your ears, as you mope, alone, in the house.

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(S.)
In the room of an inn to which you are confined by the rain, or by sudden indisposition, the whole day, finding yourself reduced to the following delassemens de coeur;----and first for the Morning:---examining the scrawled window panes, in hopes of curious verses, and finding nothing more piquant than “I love pretty Sally Appleby of Chipping Norton.”--- “Sweet Dolly Meadows!”--- “A.B. G. M. T. S. &C. &C. dined here July the 4th, 1799.”---“I am very unhappy. Sam. Jennings.”---“Life at best is but a jest.”--- “Wm. Witkins is a fool,”---with “So are you,” written under it.---“dam pit,” &c. &c. together with sundry half finished initials scratched about. Then for your Evening recreations:---after having for the twentieth time, held a candle to the wretched prints, or ornaments, with which the room is hung---(such as female personifications of the Four Seasons, or the Cardinal Virtues,) daubed over, any how, with purple, red, and raspberry cream colours---or a series of halfpenny prints, called “Going out in the Morning”--- “Starting a Hare”--- “Coming in at the Death,” &c.---or a Jemmy Jessamy lover in a wood, in new boots, but without spurs, whip horse, or hat, with his hair full dressed, on one knee, in the dirt, before a coy Maypole Miss in an old fashioned riding dress; both figures being partly coloured, and partly plain---or a gogling wax Queen bolt upright in a deep glass case, among the minikin pillars of a tawdry temple wreathed with red foil, tinsel, and green varnished leaves---or the map of England, with only about four counties, and no towns in it, worked in a sampler by the landlady’s youngest daughter, “aged 10 years,”--- “ or a little fat plaster man on the chimneypiece, with his gilt cocked hat at the back of his head, and a pipe in his mouth; being the centre figure to a china Shakespeare and Milton, in Harlequin jackets, at the two extremities---after getting all of this by heart, (I say) asking, in despair, for some books; which, when brought, turn out to be Bracken’s Farriery---three or four wrecks of different spelling books---Gauging made easy---a few odd vols. of the Racing Calendar---an abridged Abridgment of the History of England in question and answer, with half the leaves torn out, and the other half illegible with greasy thumbing---an old list of Terms, Transfer days, &c. with Tax Tables, &c. &c.---in each of which you try a few pages, nod over them til nine o’clock, and then stumble to bed in a cloud of disgust.

(T.)
In riding against the wind---feeling a great insect dash into your eye---(“subito objictur monstrous!”)---then, after carrying it home in an agony, and sitting for an hour while the socket is rummaged with the corner of a handkerchief---your eye left sorer than ever, the animal seeming considerably grown, since he first took shelter under your “pent house lid.”

(S.)
While walking on the high-road---to be suddenly and sociably joined by a man who is going the same way, and is not to be discouraged by the dry, repulsive hauteur with which you receive his advances towards conversation; the great misfortune being that he is neither entertaining, so that you can forgive his familiarity for the sake of his advantages---nor altogether a plebeian, so that you can cut him without ceremony---nor insolent, so that you can knock him down, and thus drop him and his acquaintance together.

(T.)
When travelling without a servant---overseeing the operation of changing the luggage of your well-crammed chaise; leaving you to choose between the two plans of shivering and loitering about the Inn-yard in the rain while it is doing, or leaving all your property to be stolen at leisure in your absence.

(S.)
Starting for a long ride, on a dinner engagement, without a great coat, in a mist, which successively becomes a mizzle, a drizzle, a shower, a rain, a torrent:---on arriving at the house, at last, completely drenched, you have to beg the favour of making yourself look like a full or empty sack, by wearing your host’s intractable clothes.

(T.)
Riding out to dinner many miles off, on a beast that will not quit his walk, while you know that nothing short of a full gallop will save your time:---no spurs, and nothing in your hand but a weak stick, which you presently break into a flail; and this (for fear of being reduced to the stump) you are obliged to use more gently, than before, though the animal would take more beating (if you had it to give,) than ever.

(T.)
A Tour of the Continent;---or, in other words, a long fit of sea-sickness, introductory to a series of journies, presenting---roads without turn-pikes---carriages without springs---horses without strength---postillions without feeling---cookery without cleanliness---beds, not without vermin---charges without moderation---streets without flag-stones---houses without friends---questions without answers---absence without letters---and "Miseries" without...end!

(T.)
On packing up your own clothes for a journey, because your servant is a fool---the burning fever into which you are thrown, when, after all your standing, stamping, lying, kneeling, tugging, and kicking, at the lid of your trunk, it peremptorily refuses to approach nearer than half a yard to the lock.

(S.)
Taking a farewell ride with a friend for the purpose of talking over many important matters which you had no fair opportunity of discussing before---you being mounted on a slight pony, he on a stout horse of 15-1/2 hands; the consequence of which is soon discovered to be, that you might as well have shaken hands before you started; not one of your paces suiting with any of his; except perhaps, that his common trot is just a match for your top speed,---which last, however, is not just the pace for grave and quiet discourse.

(T.)
Going to an inn at a busy time, on an hired horse which you had never seen before, and of which you have taken so little notice, that when the hostler (whose recollection of him fails also,) inquires which of about 50 horses in the stable is yours, you are reduced to conjecture.

(S.)
In a post-chaise---the option of being starved or stunned; the first from the rush of cold air if you let down the window, the second from its deafening jingle if you keep it up.

(T.)
A very high hard trotting horse, who sets off before you have discovered that the stirrups are too long to assist you in humouring his jolt:---they, trying in vain to stop him.

(T.)
At an inn, after pulling off your boots---the options of going barefoot the rest of the evening, or expatiating in a pair of boundless slippers that have been tenanted by a thousand feet; and which, when you do wear them, (as you must in going up to bed over the wet stairs,) are stumbled off, and to be stooped for (when you are dead asleep, at every stair from the ground to the garret.

(T.)
Sleeping, on a sudden and desperate emergency, at a low lodging house, et ses agrément;--your head broken, at the outset by the beam of your chamber door, for ducking only a foot deep, in passing under it. Then for the interior---floor all hill and dale---no fire place---one crazy chair; however, plenty of huge family chests, quite handy! all about your bed---a litter of sleepless brats hard by, with only a half inch pannel between their throats and your ears---Landlord playing a running bass under their trebles, by snoring, like Polypheme, through the opposite boards---farthing candle, without snuffers, or extinguisher---no nightcap, or one of stretching cotton, that takes in your shoulders---pillow left out---sheets of the sailkind, newly sprinkled for the gentleman--knotty mattress---no soap---only rainwater, and that a spoonful in a wine bottle, all black at the bottom---a dramglass for a tumbler---but one towel, or rather duster, about six inches wide, counting the holes---house maid’s comb, and triangular scrap of looking glass, exhibiting sundry curious stripes of daylight, left you as a memorial of the quicksilver almost all dead and gone! its two or three surviving patches barely allowing you to play at bopeep with a few fractions of your features by turns---scanty (if any) curtains---cat left under your bed, and kittening over you in the night, &c. &c. &c. On rising in the morning, (no one coming to open your windows.) you break your nails in baffled attempts to find out, in the dark, the cramp principle upon which the shutters are fastened; --no bell---or one attached to a flagging, fluttering wire, that answers only by rustily, and peevishly, jarring and buzzing along the mildewed walls, and mazy passages: after ten tugs, however, at the broken end of this iron thread, twisted round your bare wrist, (no handle!) you at length extort from the reclining clapper one dead ting, which brings up, in the sequel, a gawky malkin, who snuffles to you through the door, and then mistakes all your orders:---all this while, you are shivering in your shirt, barefoot; your boots having been clawed away, (but not cleaned,) and no slippers left in their room!

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(T.)
In a summer excursion with a delightful party---having one Black Sheep in your flock, who, though he obtruded himself upon the company, neither enjoys the fine scenery, joins in your gaiety, can put up with the inconveniencies on the road, nor readily falls in with your travelling arrangements---yet will not take himself away.

(T.)
Being mounted on a beast who, as soon as you have watered him on the road, proceeds very cooly to repose himself in the middle of the pond, without taking you at all into his counsel, or paying the slightest attention to your vivid remonstrances on the subject.

(T.)
Sleeping---or rather trying in vain to sleep---at an inn, on the assembly night: your chamber being immediately contiguous to the ball room, and your ears assailed, till the time of rising, by the constant din of feet and fiddles---not to mention perpetual irruptions of whole herds of Bucks, blundering into your room, full of jest, and roaring for refreshments, &c.--neither lock nor bolt to the door.

(T.)
On a solitary journey---arriving at a poor town at the time of the Fair, or on market day, and (the only tolerable house being full) being shown “into the worst inn’s worst room,” the centre of which is occupied by a large round deal table, well slopped with beer, the whole apartment reeking with the stale fumes of tobacco;---while you remain, your solitude is enlivened by the roaring jocularity of drovers, draymen, poachers, &c. &c. idling over their mugs by the fireside, and scarcely divided from you by a thin partition.

(S.)
In travelling on horseback through an uninhabited country, inquiring your way, as you proceed, of different rustics, each of whom, besides giving you unintelligible directions as to your road, represents the place in question as many miles farther off than it had been reported by the last; thus making you seem to recede in your progress;---not to mention your expense of time and temper, from their anxious and useful inquiries as to the point from which you started, together with their rigmarole wonderings and lamentations at the number of miles which you have travelled out of your way.

(T.)
After having, with the utmost difficulty, closed, and locked, and corded, your crammed trunk---being obliged to undo all, in order to get at something which lurks at the very bottom:---this, two or three times over.

(T.)
Attempting to pencil memoranda in a curricle, on a single piece of paper placed in the palm of your left hand:---cross road.

(T.) The moment of discovering that you have dropped a highly valued hereditary whip of stick out of an open carriage, without knowing when or where.

(T.)
Getting up for a journey, with a racking headache, which has kept you awake till within half an hour of the time when you are called---the following scene having passed between you and your travelling companion:--- “Mane, piger, stertis:--Surge! inquit; eja Surge!---Negas.---Instat: surge! inquit:---non queo:---surge!”* *You, snoring, dream till noon:---”Up! up!” he cries. No, ho:-- “Yes! yes! get up!” ---I can’t:--- “Rise, rise!”

(S.)
In riding---after having dismounted in a solitary place, being refused by your horse the liberty of remounting him---no one being at hand to hold his head---so that, after many hard, but ineffectual struggles with him, he finishes the dispute by a parting kick, and so takes his leave.

(T.)
Sleeping (or rather lying) over night at the sordid Inn from which your coach is to start before day-break:---then, at 1 or 2 o'clock in a January morning, to be terrified out of your senses by the stumping, blundering Yahoo of an hostler, as he bolts in, with a lanthorn at your eyes, and suddenly breaks out with a wry-mouthed bray of---"any body here for VEY-mouth! GLOS-ter!---OOS-ter!, Uc.

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(S.)
In seeing what is called “a Shew house,” --- keeping pace, whether you will or not, through all the rooms, with another party, (Hottentots,) --- by which means, besides having your privacy destroyed, you cannot hear (or cannot understand) what is said by one guide, for the continual gabble of the other.

(T.)
In a bleak ride---to be kept freezing at a turnpike gate for half an hour, while you fumble in your pocket, with a thick glove on, (which you have not courage to take off) for pence to yap:---your fingers being so stupefied by the cold, that even without a glove, they could not feel the difference between a handkerchief and a halfpenny.

(T.)
Evening relaxation for two, at a bad inn:---on asking for a backgammon board, seeing one brought in, in ruin:---the men half lost, and the dice quite: if you are still bent on playing, you supply the deficiency of the former with wafers, pocket pieces, lip salve boxes, cut cards, &c. and of the latter with bits of cork, shaped out as you can, burning out the dots with a red hot fork, which, in your hurry, occasionally jerks off, and drifts a deuce or two extraordinary in your own hand......

(S.)
At a bad inn---a very small egg brought to you in a very tall wine glass, at the bottom of which, the egg slops and tumbles about, far below the reach of your fingers and the spoon.

(S.)
At an inn dinner---when you have ordered some fruit, and received a sprightly “Yes, Sir!” from the waiter, which raises your hopes to the highest pitch, seeing after a long delay, the promised treat set upon the table---consisting of one dish of mellow apples, a second of green medlars, a third of flinty grapes, and a fourth of withered walnuts---the only circumstance of reality attending your sham dessert being the very substantial price which you are made to pay for it.

(S.)
After you have rashly ventured upon an unexamined sandwich at an inn, discovering as you get on, that it contains more butter (and that bad) than bread; and, for one inch of lean, four or five of stringy fat.

(T.)
Your carriage horses all at once standing inflexibly still, just as you are entering, late in the evening, upon Hounslow heath, with half your income in your pocket, and no pistols to guard it.

(S.)
In North Wales---after a long morning’s ramble over Snowdon---on returning, half famished, to your ill provided inn, finding that the fowl and vegetables, which you had bespoken for dinner, have just been clawed off the spit, and out of the pot, vi et armis, by half a dozen head of low, blustering rascallions who had come in from their hilly excursion, bellowing for food, a few minutes before you.

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(T.)
Discovering, at the end of a long and fatiguing journey, that you have involuntarily lightened your travelling carriage by leaving, two or three hundred miles behind, the box of letters, papers, account books, &c. which constituted the sole object of your expedition.

(S.)
Travelling a few hundred miles in a stage coach---I beg pardon---in a “slag”--- in which you, at first, found one very acceptable person---who, however, just as you have become extremely intimate, leaves you, early on the first day’s journey, exposed to a dull, coarse crew, who overwhelm you with gloom, disgust, and self-abasement, during the everlasting remainder of your jumble.

(S.)
After having overslept yourself at the inn, (in consequence of your bad bed having kept you awake two thirds of the night,) dressing yourself in a fever; then, on hastily pulling at your tight ill dried boot, seeing your heel, and half your foot, come staring out, with a loud crash, through the leather behind:---in this unspeakable moment, hearing the last curse of the waiting coachman, as he furiously drives off without you, in the midst of your bellowed entreaties that he would stop and instant longer.

(S.)
Just as you are going off, with only one other person on your side of the coach, who, you flatter yourself, is the last---seeing the door suddenly opened, and the guard, coachman, hostler, &c. &c. craning, shoving, and buttressing up an overgrown, puffing, greasy human Hod, of the butcher, or grazier breed---the whole machine straining and groaning under its cargo, from the box to the basket. By dint of incredible efforts and contrivances, the Carcass is, at length, weighed up to the door, where it has next to struggle with various and heavy obstructions in the passage. When, at length, the whole Beast is fairly slung in, and (after about a quarter of an hour consumed in the operation,) plunged down and bedded, with the squelch of a falling Ox, and the grunt of a Rhinocerous---you find yourself suddenly viced in, from the shoulder to the hip; upon which the Monster---when, in another quarter of an hour, he has finally pumped, and panted, and snorted himself into tranquillity---begins to make himself merry with your misery, and keeps braying away---totally callous to the dumb frowns, or muttered execrations, (“curses not loud but deep”) of the whole coach.

(S.)
In one of what are called the short stages, the long time during which you are doomed to reside at the door of one public house after another, while the rascally driver stops to make himself drunker and drunker.

(S.)
The attempts at Sleep which you make in a night coach, under the following lulling circumstances:---no nightcap---clapping your head, with a new hat on it (which you feel that you are ruining for ever) against the side pannel, from which it is incessantly cuffed and bumped away by the jumps and jolts of the coach---your knees miserably cramped---your opposite neighbour continually bobbing forward, in his sleep, into your stomach---the guard’s horn frequently braying you broad awake out of your momentary doze---feverish restlessness all over you, &c.;---then, just as you are, at last, sinking into something like a nap, making a dead stop at the inn where the passengers are to sup; when you all yawn, limp, shiver, and blunder along, in the dark, to a cold room, where you sit in gloomy, weary, numb, stupid silence, waiting without end for the supper, which, when brought in at last, you cannot touch, though very hungry; till at length, you crawl jaded and grumbling, back to your endless, hopeless, harassing jumble;---on looking out of the window at daybreak, you find that you are just taking leave of a sublime or beautiful country, through which you have been stealing all night; and entering on a dull, barren flat, which continues through the day---as it had done through the day before.

(T.)
Seeing and hearing the roof of a crazy coach groan, crack, and bend, over your head, beneath the successive flouncing weights of a dozen ponderous passengers, who continue to “keep this dreadful pother o’er our heads,’ by shifting their places twenty times during the journey.

(S.)
After starting on a very long journey, through a variety of strange counties, discovering that you have left your road book behind, so that you see every thing in profound ignorance; not knowing whether the town through which you are passing is Kidderminster or Aberdeen, &c. &.---the other passengers all fools, or foreigners, with no light to throw on the difficulty.

(S.)
First, failing of a place in a night coach; then, (your journey urgent, and no other conveyance to be had) the cool comfort of a seat on the roof, without a great coat, amidst a gang of wretches, while a sleety rain is just coming on.

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(S.)
The state of writhing torture into which you are occasionally thrown by the sudden and unexpected questions or remarks, of a child, before a large company;---a little wretch of your own, for instance that will run up to an unmarried lady, (one who would rather be thought a youthful Sinner, than an elderly Saint,) and then harrow you by crying out, before you have time to gag it,---"Now do, Miss---let me count the creases in your face---there's one, there's two, there's three," &c.---or, accosting another lady in the same explicit strain, electrifies you by breaking out with---"Why do you come here so often? for, do you know, my Aunt always says she can't abide you---don't you Aunt?" &c. &c.

(T.)
In attempting to take up the poker softly, (an invalid asleep in the room) throwing it violently down, sociably accompanied the tongs and shovel in its fall.

(T.)
Briskly stooping to pick up a lady’s fan at the same moment when two other gentlemen are doing the same, and so making a cannon with your head against both of theirs---and this without being the happy man, after all.

(S.)
A perpetual blister---alias, a sociable next door neighbour, who has taken a violent affection for you, in return for your no less violent antipathy to him.

(T.)
Visiting a remarkably nice Lady, who lets you discover, by the ill suppressed convulsion of her features and motions, that she considers your shoes as not sufficiently wiped, (in your passage over at least twenty mats)--that you stand too near to a darling jar---lean rather too emphatically against the back of your chair---are in danger of waking Shock, by speaking in too high a key, &c. &c.---till you begin to envy the situation of real prisoners.

(S.)
Suddenly thinking of your best argument in a debate, and, in your eagerness to state it, swallowing your wine the wrong way, and so squeaking and croaking more and more unintelligibly, with the tears running down your cheeks, till the conversation has been turned, or your antagonist has left the company.

(S.)
At a flat evening-visit---long after you have been tortured with violent longings to be gone---endeavouring, at last, to catch the eye of your tattling wife, and interchange the mysterious signal; yet, though you have pointed her like a partridge for half an hour, she will not rise.

(S.)
To be dragged by a soi-disant man of taste through every corner of his new Place, within and without doors---lumber-rooms, offices, and out-houses included;---every thing of his own whole and sole contrivance, and consequently displayed and commented on with an air of exultation which almost prescribes for you the speeches you are to keep making all the way.---Having no talents, however, for seeming charmed, when you are nauseated, you are to take your choice between telling sweet lies faintly and clumsily---and so selling your conscience for nothing---or raking his ear with one sweeping broadside of plain truth; as, "Sir, your House is a shew-box, and your Grounds a tea-garden."

(T.)
After having left a company in which you have been galled by the raillery of some wag by profession---thinking, at your leisure, of a repartee which, if discharged at the proper moment, would have blown him to atoms.

(S.)
A fellow who shortens your life by perpetually quoting the authority of some man by whom he swears, upon all sorts of subjects and occasions---annulling your reasons, and even disproving your facts, with---"No, Sir, it can't be---Mr. C. thinks (or says, or feels, or finds,) quite the contrary:"--or, "well, perhaps, you may be in the right; however, I shall see Mr. C. to-morrow, and then I'll ask him:" nay, even on matters of merely animal taste or preference, still leans upon his grand prop; as---"I am very fond of plumb-pudding;---so is Mr. C. indeed--Mr C. is very fond of plumb-pudding, too," &c.

(T.)
Losing your way in an argument, so as to be obliged suddenly to hold your tongue, though an instant before, you had the whole series of your reasoning full in view, and could you have brought them to bear on your opponent at the proper moment, he must have been struck dead.

(S.)
Accompanying a fond father in his attendance at his daughter’s “dancing day,” at a petty boarding school.

(T.)
At a house, swarming with spoiled children---the polite tranquility of manner and countenance for which you have to labour during the outrageous, incessant, and unchecked aggressions upon the quiet of the conversation, by one or other of the nest, for half a day together---and all this where you are not sufficiently on terms of friendship to shew your enmity; so that you are fain to sit under it all, gulping down your feelings, or perhaps stroking the cheeks of the dear little pests,---with every finger itching for a very different kind of touch:---nay, should you ever chance to be delivered for a few minutes, from these taller urchins, who have learned to walk and talk, (I mean, to stomp and roar,) their places are instantly supplied by detachments from the cradle; for, before you can take breath, in pours a whole troop of nurses, each armed with a fractious brat, by way of relieving guard. And now a new sort of sport immediately commences---the little ones setting up their pipes all at once, at the first glimpse of the stranger, and every Abigail vociferously soothing her own squawler with a volley of nursery nonsense; till at length all the Cry are sent out---Mamma's Poppet only excepted, for which she undertakes that "it will be quiet as a little lamb in a moment," and accordingly proceeds to still it by a shrill charm made up of the following sorts of ingredients:---
(Testy sings.)

We're all in the dumps, for D'imonds is trumps and the kittens are gone to St. Paul's, And the babies are bit and the moon's in a fit, and the houses are built without walls.

(S.)
After dinner, with a favourite party, when the cloth has been removed, and the wine of conversation, as well as of the bottle, is just beginning to brighten---seeing the door open, and a string of staring babies brought in, and carried round, to be caressed and admired, during the rest of the sitting; an outrage from which there is not even a bylaw, or dead letter statute, under our otherwise happy constitution, which will afford you the smallest redress.

(S.)
Balking a good gape, by forcing your lips close together, in order to keep it a secret from a dull dog, that you are yawning in your sleeve at his stupidity.

(S.)
Seeing a swaggering smatterer in knowledge encircled by his levee of listeners, who blindly recognize his claim to be considered as an oracle;---perpetually, and howlingly, consulting him, and then patiently swallowing the response, like a bolus, without venturing to analyze it.

(S.)
In conversation---inadvertently touching the string which you know will call forth the longest story of the flattest poser that ever droned.

(S.)
In trying to laugh at the heavy joke of a good man, but a vile jester, (“hilaris cum pondere virtas”) producing only that sort of spurious chuckle, or laborious ha! ha! which you feel must betray you, even to the worthy wag himself, though not at all of a suspicious nature:---then, on being asked by one of the company “what is the joke,” being driven to confess, that you “do not know”---as, in truth you do not; having laughed gratuitously, (without hearing, or taking, what was said,) merely to pleasure the old gentleman, whose smiling eye, thrown round the table at the conclusion of his speech, has levied a general tax upon the muscles of his friends.

(S.)
The necessity sometimes imposed on you of wringing your features into a smirk, in addressing a poltroon, who is a tiger at home, and a lamb abroad; or any other miscreant out of a prison.

(S.)
Talking with a man of iron, who hears only himself; and who, after you have knocked all his arguments on the head, one after the other, proceeds to haunt you with their ghosts; so that, destroying the substance only brings upon you the additional trouble of laying the shadow.

(S.)
Making your best bow for a supposed high compliment to your self, which, however, you are presently petrified by discovering was either not intended at all, or intended for another.

(S.)
Compelling yourself to take gulp after gulp of the ipecacuanha of flattery, (known to be purely selfinterested,) out of regard to the feelings of some worthy friend or relation of the parasite, and whose presence restrains you from sp-tt-ng in his face.

(S.)
Being crowed over in an argument by one whom politeness prevents you from telling that you do not answer him, merely because, from the thickness of his utterance, as well as of his head, you do not know what he says, or means.

(T.)
On an afternoon visit in the country---receiving a summons to attend a few Cats, (who think themselves Kittens,) in their evening promenade, while the enchanting girl who formed your sole attraction to the house, is confined at home by a slight indisposition, which would have only rendered her additionally interesting.

(S.)
On going to settle in a strange neighbourhood, far away from one in which you had a delightful society, performing quarantine in your own house for six months at least, while the good people around you are debating, at a cautious distance, whether you may, yet, be safely approached, to be stared at upon trial.

(S.)
At a dinner table---being placed at the bottom, while all the choicest and liveliest people are thrown to the top---you longing to be among them, and to join their flights of fancy, instead of grinding along, with your neighbours at the drowsy end of the table, in their broad wheeled waggons, on the milestone road of matter of fact.

(S.)
While you are attentively listening to the information or opinions of a well stored man, being perpetually “pestered by a popinjay” at your elbow, who claws you away from your nourishment, and forces you to swallow his froth.

(S.)
Falling in with a fellow who thinks he can entertain you by reciting in detail the dishes, courses, and cookery, of his favourite dinners for the last month---besides rehearsals of meals in prospect, as far as he is yet studied in the bills of fare;---in short, who requires you to hear him conjugate the verb to dine, in the first person singular, through all its moods and tenses.

(S.)
Receiving the condolence of one whose manner and countenance confess, against his orders, that his heart is in a broad grin.

(S.)
At breakfast---hearing a good old lady detail, at full length, her last night’s long dull dream, affording nothing more remarkable than the usual chaos of conclusions without premises, and that sort of topsyturvy, tangled account of the flattest incidents of common life which we could give every morning, if we did not make all possible haste to forget the nonsense, as soon as we have recovered our senses: but this is not all; for as soon as she has, at length, brought her idiotic narrative to an end, and you begin to breathe again, your attention is once more laid in irons, while she buckles to the interpretation of it in all its parts!

(S.)
A fellow who treats you in all respects (the fee excepted) like his physician;---unreservedly laying before you, while he is helping you at dinner, all the minutest particulars of his most revolting ailments, from the first attack down to the present moment.--- “Morobrum quoque te causas, et signa docebo.” * Virg.

*.....now will I rehearse
The birth, and symptoms of each sore disease.

(S.)
Walking in a wind that cuts to the bone, with a narrative companion, whose mind and body cannot move at the same time; or in other words, who, as he gets on with his stories, thinks it necessary, at every other sentence, to stand stock still, face about, and make you do the same; then, totally regardless of your shivering impatience to push on, refuses to stir an inch, till the whole of his endless thread is fairly wound out.

(S.)
In a ballroom---after long sitting, in profound meditation on the extreme edge of a form, with only one other person at the farther end, being suddenly recalled from your absence by finding that you are amusing the company with an involuntary somerset, brought on by the abrupt departure of your Counterpoise; the bench (which had remained perfectly gentle, as long as it carried double) seizing the opportunity of throwing its astonishing rider, without further ceremony, by furiously rearing at one end, and plunging at the other.

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READING & WRITING