If I live to be a hundred years old, I shall never forget the sight--at once terrible and absurd--which met my eyes.

Before the kitchen fire stood Isabella, having evidently slept in her clothes all night.

She looked wretched and bloated, and quite curiously dirty, as black as if she had been up the chimney; and even I could see that, early as was the hour, she was hopelessly drunk.

Between both of her nerveless, black hands, she held a poker, with which she struck, from time to time, a feeble blow on a piled-up heap of plates, which she persisted in considering a lump of coal.

The fire was nearly out, but she hastened to assure me that if she could only break this lump of coal it would soon burn up.
Need I say that I rescued my plates at once, and marched the bearded one off to her own apartment.
Oh, how dimmed its dainty freshness had become since even yesterday! Sarah was summoned, and confessed that she had known last night that "Hisabella" had gone on the "burst," having bought, for some fabulous sum, a bottle of rum from a passing swagger.