preferred India to England, and what progress I was making in my studies, &c., and so forth, all of which I answered faithfully, to the best of my abilities.
After that he addressed me by fits and starts and longo intervallo, yet displaying so manifest and absorbent a delight in my society that he could not bring himself to terminate the audience, while I was to conceal my immense wearisomeness and the ardent desire I had conceived to leave him.
And thus he detained me there hour after hour, until five minutes past one p.m., when he recollected, with many professions of chagrin, that he had an appointment to take his tiffin, and dismissed me, inviting me cordially to come again.
If, however, it is expected of me that I can devote three hours and a half to ceremonial civilities, I must respectfully answer with a Nolo episcopari for my time is more precious than rubies, and so I will beg not only Mr Melladew, Esq., Barrister-at-law, but all other Anglo-Saxon friends and their families, to accept this as a verbum sap. and wink to a blind horse.
