overheard, a military gentleman, somewhat irritable. with having more wine than wit, said out loud, that he did not conceive a public room a fit place to talk Latin in. We forget what our schoolfellow said to this: but in consequence of his enlisting the company on our side with his jokes, the captain proposed to give him his address. "Sir," says P., with great gravity," you need not trouble yourself with a specimen: I never had any doubt of your being a man of address.” "Sir," returned the captain more vehemently, his voice a little titubating with wine"You will not- then- take my address?" "O, excuse me, sir," replied the other, "I do take it infinitely; and all the rest of us take it." By this time the amusement of the audience had much increased. "Sir!" repeated the officer, half rising from his seat, and tumbling a little towards him, with pipe in hand, and angry wonder in his eye,- "I say, sir, do you -- I mean to mean to say, sir, know what I mean - you say, sir, I'll give you my address; that's what I mean." "But, sir," retorted our inflexible companion, "you must allow me to say that your liberality is really superfluous; since, to confess the truth, I really don't at all approve of your address." At this the tottering man (who, you might see by his face was good-humored enough, and worth being parried in this way by a gentleman) staggered up to his antagonist, and held out his hand to him, declaring he was one of the pleasantest fellows he ever met with in the whole course of his life, and nothing should induce him to quarrel with him. We do not profess any practical science in meals. Those who do will despise us at once, when they hear that we prefer breakfast and tea to dinner, and that by breakfast, we mean a very common one." * But we know what belongs to a meal. There was a layschoolfellow of ours, who was always proposing to treat some of us at a tavern; though he never did. He contented himself with casting up what he called "the damages." He used to cry out on a sudden, "It doesn't signify talking, but we will have that dinner I spoke of this afternoon. Come, now; I'm serious. Let us see what will be the damages?" He would then take pen, ink, and paper, and fall to making out a grave list of fish, flesh, and tart; till the exceeding wish to realize it, almost made dupes of our cloistered imaginations for the seventh time. The worst of it was, that he himself used to go home and feast on what he had been speaking of; while we were rung up in the hall, and dined like the monks of La Trappe. We shall reverse the spirit of this vagary. Our breakfast will be upon paper, but our readers shall have more than we are in the habit of seeing on our table. Students are at once tempted to exceed, and obliged to be temperate. The exhaustion of their faculties excites them to indulge a morbid appetite; while the delicacy of stomach produced by that exhaustion, makes them cautious how they render it greater next time. What shall we say then? For "it does not signify "It seems, says Fuller, in speaking of the ravens that brought Elijah bread and flesh in the morning and evening, "it seems dinners are but innovations, whilst breakfasts and suppers are men's most ancient and natural meals.” -A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, chapter 3, paragraph 17. — ED. talking." We will have the breakfast he spoke of. And here it is, ready laid. Imprimis, tea and coffee; secondly, dry toast; thirdly, butter; fourthly, eggs; fifthly, ham; sixthly, something potted; seventhly, bread, salt, mustard, knives and forks, &c. One of the first things that belong to a breakfast is a good fire. There is a delightful mixture of the lively and the snug in coming down into one's breakfast-room of a cold morning, and seeing everything prepared for us; a blazing grate, a clean table-cloth and tea things, the newly-washed faces and combed heads of a set of good-humored urchins, and the sole empty chair at its accustomed corner, ready for occupation. When we lived alone, we could not help reading at meals: and it is certainly a delicious thing to resume an entertaining book at a particularly interesting passage, with a hot cup of tea at one's elbow, and a piece of buttered toast in one's hand. The first look at the page, accompanied by a coexistent bite of the toast, comes under the head of intensities. But when in company, unless it is of a very private and pardoning description, it is, of course, not to be done, unless all read; and a general reading in company is a sort of understood talking. The most allowable perusal is that of a newspaper. It involves a common interest, and is in itself a very sufficing and matutine thing. But we have enlarged on the pleasure of a breakfast paper elsewhere, in an article entitled A Day by the Fire; which, by the way, will prevent us from indulging ourselves in other particulars appertaining to the present subject. We have it not by us, nor are we aware that we have before mentioned what we are going to notice: but we wish to observe, that ladies, always delightful, and not the least so in their undress, are apt to deprive themselves of some of their best morning beams by appearing with their hair in papers. We give notice that essayists, and of course. all people of taste, prefer a cap, if there must be anything but hair, a million times over. To see grapes in paper bags is bad enough, but the rich locks of a lady in papers, the roots of the hair twisted up like a drummer's, and the forehead staring bald instead of being gracefully tendrilled and shadowed!—it is a capital offence, a defiance to the love and admiration of the other sex, a provocative to a paper war: and we here accordingly declare the said war on paper, not having any ladies at hand to carry it at once into their headquarters. We must allow, at the same time, that they are very shy of being seen in this condition, knowing well enough how much of their strength, like Samson's, lies in that gifted ornament. We have known a whole parlor of them flutter off, like a dovecot, at the sight of a friend coming up the garden. But to return to our table. Ham is a good thing, but it is apt to fever our sedentary notions. We prefer cracking the round end of an egg with the back of a silver spoon, not a horn spoon, which is flimsy and inefficient. A judicious jerk of the former upon a good, fair, dome-like shell issuing out of the egg cup, maketh a pretty result to the sensations. We cannot, in conscience, recommend hot buttered toast; but it is a pleasing guilt. The best adventure to which it can give rise, is when you have modestly taken one of the outside pieces, and find your gentility rewarded by carrying off the whole of the crumb part of the inner one, the crust of which has been detached. Chocolate has a nutty taste, but is heavy. Coffee is heating, but has a fine, serious flavor in it, if well done. You seem to taste the color of it. We used to prefer it at all times, but tea has become preferable to the meditative state of our digestion. How the Chinese came to invent it, as Sancho would say, we do not know: but it is the most ingenious, humane, and poetical of their discoveries. It is their epic poem 1820. GOING TO THE PLAY AGAIN. 7ITH the exception of Oberon, we have not W witnessed a theatrical performance till the other night for these six or seven years. Fortune took us another way; and when we had the opportunity we did not dare to begin again, lest our old friends should beguile us. We mention the circumstance, partly to account for the notice we shall take of many things which appear to have gone by; and partly out of a communicativeness of temper, suitable to a Companion. For the reader must never lose sight of our claims to that title. On ordinary occasions, he must remember that we are discussing morals or mince-pie with him; on political ones, reading the newspaper with him; and in the present instance, we are sitting together in the pit (the ancient seat of |