How often in senior common-rooms may be marked the gradual dropping
asleep of the learned and venerable members! First, after a few rounds
of the bottle, the tongues, which are tired of eulogizing or
vituperating the various dishes which had smoked upon the board,
gradually begin to be still,--soon conversation comes absolutely to a
stand,--the candles grow alarmingly long in the wick,--comparative
darkness involves the sage assembly,--and first one, then another, drops
off into a placid and harmonious repose. Then what dreams float before
the eyes of their imagination! Blue silk pelisses jostling shovel hats,
church spires dancing in most admired disorder, fat incumbents falling
down in a fit, neat clerical-looking gigs standing at vicarage doors,
and these all incongruously commingled with white veils, lawn sleeves,
roast beef, pulpit cushions, bright eyes, and small black sarsnet shoes.
Suddenly the chapel bell dissolves the fleeting fabric of the vision;
and, behold! the white veil is a poet's imagination, the church spire is
still at a miserable distance, the vicarage is a Utopian nonentity, and
the fat incumbent, in a state of the ruddiest health, is the only
reality of the dream.
_--Blackwood's Magazine._
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