Excerpt: ... your honour afore he'd settle-I tell him 'tis the change of beds, which always hinders a body to sleep the first night." The sense of having totally forgotten the poor fellow-the contrast between this forgetfulness and the anxiety and contrition of the two preceding nights, actually surprised Ormond: he could hardly believe that he was one and the same person. Then came excuses to himself: "Gratitude- common civility-the peremptoriness of King Corny-his passionate temper, when opposed on this tender point-the locked door-and two to one: in short, there was an impossibility in the circumstances of doing otherwise than what he had done. But then the same impossibility-the same circumstances-might recur the next night, and the next, and so on: the peremptory temper of King Corny was not likely to alter, and the moral obligation of gratitude would continue the same; so that at nineteen was he to become, from complaisance, what his soul and body abhorred-an habitual drunkard? And what would become of Lady Annaly's interest in his fate or his improvement?" The two questions were not of equal importance, but our hero was at this time far from having any just proportion in his reasoning: it was well he reasoned at all. The argument as to the obligation of gratitude-the view he had taken of the never-ending nature of the evil, which must be the consequence of beginning with weak complaisance-above all, the feeling that he had so lost his reason as not only to forget Moriarty, but to have been again incapable of commanding his passions, if any thing had occurred to cross his temper, determined Ormond to make a firm resistance on the next occasion that should occur: it did occur the very next night. After a dinner given to his chief tenants and the genteel people of the islands- a dinner in honour and in introduction of his adopted son, King Corny gave a toast "to the Prince presumptive," as he now styled him-a bumper toast. Soon...… (more)