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of what had taken place in Dawdley's study, and with the Maraschino and the eau de Cologne I had drank...

"What a fine odour of lavender-water!

we rode in the carriage.

said Dawdley, as

I put my head out of the window and shrieked out a laugh; but made no other reply.

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What's the joke, George?» said Dawdley; did I say any thing witty ? »

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No, cried I, yelling still more wildly; «nothing more witty than usual. »

Don't be severe, George," said he, with a mortified air and we drove on to B- --House.

There must have been something strange and wild in my appearance, and these awful black plumes, as I passed through the crowd; for I observed people looking and making a strange nasal noise (it is called sniffing, and for which I have no other more delicate term), and making way as I pushed on; but I moved forward very fiercely, for the wine, the Maraschino, the eau de Cologne, and the-the excitement had rendered me almost wild; and at length I arrived at the place where my lovely Lady of the Lake and her Harper stood. How beautiful she looked, all eyes were upon her as she stood blushing. When she saw me, however, her countenance assumed an appearance of alarm. Good heavens, George!» she said, stretching her hand to me;

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so wild and pale? I advanced, and was going to take her hand, when she dropped it with a scream.

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• Ah-ah-ah! she said; Mr. Fitz-Boodle, you've been smoking!.

There was an immense laugh from four hundred people round about us, and the scoundrelly Dawdley joined in the yell. I rushed furiously out, and as I passed, hurtled over the fat Hereditary Prince of Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel.co

Es nicht hier ungeheuer stark von Tabak! I heard his highness say, as madly I flung myself through the aides-decamp.

The next day Mary M'Alister, in a note full of the most odious good sense and sarcasm, reminded me of our agreement;

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said that she was quite convinced that we were not by any means fitted for one another, and begged me to consider myself henceforth quite free.. The little wretch had the impertinence to send me a dozen boxes of cigars, which, she said, would console me for my lost love; as she was perfectly certain that I was not mercenary, and I loved tobacco better than any woman in the world.

I believe she was right, though I have never to this day been able to pardon the scoundrelly stratagem by which Dawdley robbed me of a wife and won one himself. As I was lying on his sofa, looking at the moon and lost in a thousand happy contemplations, Lord Dawdley, returning from the tailor's, saw me smoking at my leisure. On entering his dressing-room, a horrible treacherous thought struck him. «I must not betray my friend,» said he; «but in love all, is fair, and he shall betray himself. There were my tartans, my cursed feathers, my tiger-skin sporran, upon the sofa.

He called up my groom; he made the rascal put on all my clothes, and, giving him a guinea and four cigars, bade him lock himself into the little pantry and smoke them without taking the clothes off. John did so, and was very ill in consequence, and so when I came to B—— House, my clothes were redolent of tobacco, and I lost lovely Mary M'Alister.

I am godfather to one of Lady Dawdley's boys, and hers is the only house where I am allowed to smoke unmolested; but I have never been able to admire Dawdley, a sly, sournois, spiritless, lily-livered fellow, that took his name off all his clubs the year he married.

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I am sick of this squeamish English world, said I, in bitter scorn, as I sat in my lonely lodgings smoking Mary M'Alister's cigars : « a curse upon their affectations of propriety and silly obedience to the dictates of whimpering woman! I will away to some other country where thought is free, and honest men have their way. I will have no more of your rose-water passion, or cringing drawing-room tenderness. Pshaw is George Fiiz-Boodle to be bound up in the scented ringlets of a woman, or made to fetch and carry her reticule? No, I will go where women shall obey and not

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command me. I will be a Sheikh, and my wife shall cook my couscous, and dance before me, and light my narghilé. I will be a painted savage spearing the fish, and striking the deer, and my wife shall sing my great actions to me as I smoke my calumet in my lodge. Away! land of dowagers and milk-sops, Fitz-Boodle disowns you; he will wander to some other clime, where man is respected, and woman takes her proper rank in the creation, as the pretty smiling slave she would be. »

I received at this time, in an abrupt enclosure from my father, 120/., being a quarter's income, and a polite intimation from Lady Fitz-Boodle, that as I had disappointed every one of my parents' expectations (she my parent! faugh!), I must never look to the slightest pecuniary aid from them. Such a sum would not enable me to travel across the Atlantic or to the shores of the Red Sea, as was my first intention; I determined, therefore, to visit a country where, if woman was still too foolishly worshipped, at least smoking was tolerated, and took my departure at the Tower Stairs for Rotterdam and the Rhine.

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There were no incidents of the voyage worth recounting, nor am I so absurd as to attempt to give the reader an account of Holland or any other country. This memoir is purely personal and relates rather to what I suffered than to what I saw. Not a word then about Cologne and the eleven thousand British virgins, whom a storm drove into that port, and who were condemned, as I am pleased to think, to a most merited death. Ah, Mary M'Alister! in my rage and fury I wished that there had been eleven thousand and one spinsters so destroyed. Ah! Minna Löwe, Jewess as thou wert, thou meritedst no better a fate than that which overtook those Christian damsels.

Minna Löwe was the daughter of Moses Löwe, banker at Bonn. I passed through the town last year, fifteen years after the event I am about to relate, and heard that Moses was imprisoned for forgery and fraudulent bankruptcy. He merited the punishment which the merciful Prussian law inflicted on him.

VOL. III.

28

Minna was the most beautiful creature that my eyes ever lighted on. Sneer not, ye Christian maidens; but the fact was so. I saw her for the first time seated at a window covered with golden vine-leaves, with grapes just turning to purple, and tendrils twisting in the most fantastical arabesques. The leaves cast a pretty chequered shadow over her sweet face, and the simple, thin, white muslin gown in which she was dressed. She had bare white arms, and a blue riband confined her little waist. She was knitting, as all German women do, whether of the Jewish sort or otherwise; and in the shadow of the room sat her sister Emma, a pow erful woman with a powerful voice. Emma was at the Piano, singing, Herz, mein Herz, warum so trau-au-rig-singing much out of tune.

I had come to change one of Coutts's circulars at Löwe's bank, and was looking for the door of the caisse.

Links, mein Herr!" said Minna Löwe, making the gentlest inclination with her pretty. little head; and blushing ever so little, and raising up tenderly a pair of heavy blue eyes, and then dropping them again, overcome by the sight of the stranger. And no wonder, I was a sight worth contemplating then I had golden hair which fell gracefully over my shoulders, and a slim waist (where are you now, slim waist and golden hair?), and a pair of brown mustachios that curled gracefully under a firm Roman nose, and a tuft to my chin

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that could not but vanquish any woman, Herr, said lovely Minna Löwe.

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That little word links dropped upon my wounded soul like balm. There is nothing in links; it is not a pretty word. Minna Löwe simply told me to turn to the left, when I was debating between that side and its opposite, in order to find the cash-room door. Any other person might have said links (or rechts for that matter), and would not have made the slightest impression upon me; but Minna's full red lips, as they let slip the monosyllable, wore a smile so tender, and uttered it with such inconceivable sweetness, that I was overcome at once. "Sweet bell! I could have said, tinkle that dulcet note for ever,-links, lincks, linx! I love the chime.

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It soothes and blesses me. All this I could have said, and much more, had I had my senses about me, and had I been a proficient in the German language; but I could not speak both from ignorance and emotion. I blushed, stuttered, took off my cap, made an immensely foolish bow, and began forthwith fumbling at the door-handle.

The reason why I have introduced the name of this siren is to shew that if tobacco in a former unlucky instance has proved my enemy, in the present case it was my firmest friend. I, the descendant of the Norman Fitz-Boodle, the relative of kings and emperors, might, but for tobacco, have married the daughter of Moses Löwe, the Jew forger and convict of Bonn. I would have done it; for I hold the man a slave who calculates in love, and who thinks about prudence when his heart is in question. Men marry their cookmaids and the world looks down upon them. Ne sit ancillæ amor pudori! I exclaim with a notorious poet; if you heartily and entirely love your cook-maid, you are a fool and a coward not to wed her. What more can you want than to have your heart filled up? Can a duchess do more? You talk of the difference of rank and the decencies of society. Away, sir, love is divine, and knows not your paltry, worldly calculations. It is not love you worship, O heartless, silly calculator! it is the interest of thirty thousand pounds in the three per-cents, and the blessing of a genteel mother-in-law in Harley Street, in the ineffable joy of snug dinners, and a butler behind your chair. Fool, love is eternal, butlers and mothers-in-law are perishable you have but the enjoyment of your three per-cents for forty years; and then, what do they avail you? But if you believe that she whom you choose, and to whom your heart clings, is to be your soul's companion, not now merely but for ever and ever; then what a paltry item of money or time has deterred you from your happiness, what a miserable penny-wise economist you have been!

And here, if, as a man of the world, I might be allowed to give advice to fathers and mothers of families, it would be this young men fall in love with people of a lower rank,

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