kitchen vessels of resplendent brightness; among which
steamed and hissed a huge copper tea-kettle. A large lamp
threw a strong mass of light upon the group, bringing out many
odd features in strong relief. Its yellow rays partially illu-
mined the spacious kitchen, dying duskily away into remote
corners; except where they settled in mellow radiance on the
broad side of a flitch of bacon, or were reflected back from
well-scoured utensils that gleamed from the midst of obscurity.
A strapping Flemish lass, with long golden pendants in her
ears, and a necklace with a golden heart suspended to it, was
presiding priestess of the temple.

Many of the company were furnished with pipes, and most
of them with some kind of evening potation. I found their
mirth was occasioned by anecdotes which a little swarthy
Frenchman, with a dry weazen face and large whiskers, was
giving of his love adventures; at the end of each of which
there was one of those bursts of honest unceremonious
laughter, in which a man indulges in that temple of true lib-
erty, an inn.

As I had no better mode of getting through a tedious
blustering evening, I took my seat near the stove, and listened
to a variety of travellers' tales, some very extravagant, and
most very dull. All of them, however, have faded from my
treacherous memory, except one, which I will endeavor to
relate. I fear, however, it derived its chief zest from the
manner in which it was told, and the peculiar air and appear-
ance of the narrator. He was a corpulent old Swiss, who had
the look of a veteran traveller. He was dressed in a tarnished
green travelling-jacket, with a broad belt round his waist, and
a pair of overalls with buttons from the hips to the ankles.
He was of a full, rubicund countenance, with a double chin,
aquiline nose, and a pleasant twinkling eye. His hair was
light, and curled from under an old green velvet travelling-
cap, stuck on one side of his head. He was interrupted more
than once by the arrival of guests, or the remarks of his au-
ditors; and paused, now and then, to replenish his pipe; at

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