Amidst this confusion the new man and his
friends arrive beneath the beacon which illumines the entrance of the
tavern. He descends the stairs in an agony of anticipation, and feverishly
trips up the six or eight succeeding ones to arrive at the large room. A
song has just concluded, and he enters triumphantly amidst the thunder of
applause, the jingling of glasses, the imperious vociferations of fresh
orders, and an atmosphere of smoke that pervades the whole apartment, like
dense clouds of incense burning at the altar of the genius of
conviviality.
The new man is at first so bewildered, that it would take but little extra
excitement to render him perfectly unconscious as to the probability of
his standing upon his _occipito-frontalis_ or _plantar fascia_. But as he
collects his ideas, he contrives to muster sufficient presence of mind to
order a Welsh rabbit, and in the interim of its arrival earnestly
contemplates the scene around him. There is the room which, in after life,
so vividly recurs to him, with its bygone _souvenirs_ of mirth, when he is
sitting up all night at a bad case in the mud cottage of a pauper union.
There are its blue walls, its wainscot and its pillars, its lamps and
ground-glass shades, within which the gas jumps and flares so fitfully;
its two looking-glasses, that reflect the room and its occupants from one
to the other in an interminable vista.
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