A certain mistress of a lodging-house, in Green-street, Cambridge,
where several students had rooms, having a propensity, not for the
_ethereal_ charms of the music so called, but for the invigorating
liquor itself, had a habit, with the assistance of what is called a
_screw-driver_, but which might more aptly be termed a _screw-drawer_,
of opening cupboard doors without resorting to the ordinary use of a
key. By this means she had one day abstracted a bottle of brandy from
the store of one of the students (now a barrister of some practice and
standing,) with which, the better to consume it in undisturbed
dignity, she retired to the temple of the goddess Cloacina. She had
been missed for some time, and search was made, when she was found
_half seas over_, as they say, with the remnant of the bottle still
grasped in her hand, which she had plied so often to her mouth, that
she was unable to lift her hand so high, or indeed to rise from her
_seditious_ posture. Upon this scene a caricature of the first water
was sketched, and circulated by some Cambridge wag; another threw off
the following Epigrammatic Conun:
Why is my Dalia like a rose?
Perhaps, you'll say, because her breath
Is sweeter than the flowers of earth:
No--odious thought--it is, her nose
Is redder than the reddest rose;
Which she has long been very handy
At colouring with _drops of brandy_.
Another head of a lodging-house is a notorious member of what in
Cambridge is called--