My vanity thus enlisted in Miss Vernon's behalf, I was far from judging her with severity, merely for a frankness which I supposed was in some degree justified by my own personal merit; and the feelings of partiality, which her beauty, and the singularity of her situation, were of themselves calculated to excite, were enhanced by my opinion of her penetration and judgment in her choice of a friend.
After Miss Vernon quitted the apartment, the bottle circulated, or rather flew, around the table in unceasing revolution.

My foreign education had given me a distaste to intemperance, then and yet too common a vice among my countrymen.

The conversation which seasoned such orgies was as little to my taste, and if anything could render it more disgusting, it was the relationship of the company.

I therefore seized a lucky opportunity, and made my escape through a side door, leading I knew not whither, rather than endure any longer the sight of father and sons practising the same degrading intemperance, and holding the same coarse and disgusting conversation.

I was pursued, of course, as I had expected, to be reclaimed by force, as a deserter from the shrine of Bacchus.