The Humors of Falconbridge

A keen, genteely dressed, gentlemanly man "put up" at Beltzhoover's Hotel, in Baltimore, one day some years ago, and after dining very sumptuously every day, drinking his Otard, Margieux and Heidsic, and smoking his "Tras," "Byrons," and "Cassadoras," until the landlord began to surmise the "bill" getting voluminous, he made the clerk foot it up and present it to our modern Don Cæsar De Bazan, who, casting his eye over the long lines of perpendicularly arranged figures, discovered that—which in no wise alarmed him, however—he was in for a matter of a cool C! "Ah! yes, I see; well, I presume it's all right, all correct, sir, no doubt about it," says Don Cæsar. "No doubt at all, sir," says the polite clerk,—"we seldom present a bill, sir, until the gentlemen are about to leave, sir; but when the bills are unusually large, sir—" "Large, sir? Large, my dear fellow"—says the Don—"bless your soul, you don't call that large? Why, sir, a—a—that is, when I was in Washington, at Gadsby's, sir, bless you, I frequently had my friends of the Senate and the Ministers to dine at my rooms, and what do you suppose my bills averaged a week, there, sir?"