CHAPTER V.

"So the gods bless me,

When all our offices have been oppress'd

With riotous feeders; when our vaults have wept
With drunken spilth of wine; when every room
Hath blaz'd with lights, and bray'd with minstrelsy;
I have retired me to a wasteful cock,

And set mine eyes at flow."

"I HAVE laughed," soliloquized the squire's trusty steward, honest butler, attentive valet, and ever ready porter, condensed in the one body and person of the frosted-headed Bob. "I have laughed," repeated he, walking with his hands behind him in a contemplative mood and manner up and down the large furnitureless dining room, "and I hope to laugh again at our miserable state and condition; but still it gives one, somehow, a cramp in the

regions o' the willy wabbles to think of the lean state of the cellar, and the skeleton condition of the larder. Not so much as a bottle of home-made wine in the one, and not even a shoulder of mutton hanging in the other."

Bob stopped in his discourse to himself, and shook his head almost disconsolately. "Once upon a time-it makes me wish that I had died in peace with all mankind just at that period," continued the butler. "Once upon a time, there was the cellar stacked from floor to roof, tier above tier, of the best, and only the best, of wine. Not a bin was allowed even to dwindle. 'No, no,' the squire used to say, 'no, no, Bob, keep 'em level, level as my hounds.' And then if any of the pipes or hogsheads began to sound a little hollow to the tap, 'Draw 'em off, Bob, draw 'em off,' he would say, 'and let 'em make room for those full to the bung.' Those were times to make a man love to live, and-yes," continued the old man, with a chuckling laugh,

"and also, if I don't make an error of memory, those were the times a man might live to love."

The steward appeared to be amazingly pleased with this part and parcel of his reminiscences, for he continued to laugh for some seconds, and he rubbed his hands, and skipped now and then almost nimbly in his gait.

"Then that larder!" resumed Bob, casting a reflective look to the ceiling. "Ay, that was a larder! Barons of beef were then more common within those walls than mutton chops are now cut from the neck of some skinny, old, toothless crone. Indeed," he continued, growing more serious as he spoke, "a mutton chop's becoming quite a rarity. It will soon come to hard dumplings, I suppose, without gravy. Then to see the fat haunches from the finest bucks hanging from the beams, with sides of oxen-not in joints, but just slit down the spine in halves;

and all sorts of poultry, fish, game, and such-like trifles, it made my eyes water then to look at 'em, as I often did, between sunrise and sunset, and it makes my eyes water now to think of seeing 'em; but the pump," continued the butler, mopping his moistened cheeks with the back of his hand, "but the pump," repeated he, "is from a very different vat. Yes, yes, the cisterns are two very different qualities; but one is long since dry.'

The butler again arrived at a stand-still in his observations concerning the past, perhaps, and from the dolorous expression upon his features the supposition seems probablehis emotions became too deep for the overflow of words. It was sometime before he again summoned the office of his speech; but at length he resumed.

"Then it was open house to everybody. No matter who it was, where he came from, or whence he was going, a knife and fork, and

VOL. III.

E

plenty of use for both, were at his service, either here or in the servants' hall. That depended whether he was gentle born or otherwise; but the treatment was the same from the parlour guest to the scullion. 'Eat and drink of the best, as much as you're able, as long as you're able, and a little more,' was the general order; and, great heaven!" exclaimed the lamenting steward, turning his eyes up, with a corresponding action of his hands, "how faithfully those directions were obeyed. Often and often did I try to put in a vent-peg to stop the running of the tap ever turned on, and which I knew must run out in the end, if so be there wasn't a stop put to it. Alackaday! I might as well have tried to stop the wind, or prevent the rain from falling, or the sun from shining. Sometimes and maybe it became a little too often at last, for the squire used to wave me back with his hand when he saw me coming, and halloo without hearing what I had to say