was a mull of snuff. It went the rounds. Capital idea this, thought I, of taking snuff about this juncture. This goodly fashion must be introduced among my countrymen at home, further ruminated I.
The remarkable decorum of the nine bachelors—a decorum not to be affected by any quantity of wine—a decorum unassailable by any degree of mirthfulness—this was again set in a forcible light to me by now observing that though they took snuff very freely, yet not a man so far violated the proprieties, or so far molested the invalid bachelor in the adjoining room, as to indulge himself in a sneeze. The snuff was snuffed silently, as if it had been some fine innoxious powder brushed off the wings of butterflies.
But fine though they be, bachelors’ dinners, like bachelors’ lives, cannot endure forever. The time came for breaking up. One by one the bachelors took their hats, and two by two and arm in arm they descended, still conversing, to the flagging of the court; some going to their neighbouring chambers to turn over the Decameron ere retiring for the night; some to smoke a cigar, promenading in the garden on the cool riverside; some to make for the street, call a hack, and be driven snugly to their distant lodgings.
I was the last lingerer.
‘Well,’ said my smiling host, ‘what do you think of the Temple here, and the sort of life we bachelors make out to live in it?’
‘Sir,’ said I, with a burst of admiring candour—‘Sir, this is the very Paradise of Bachelors!’