When I kindle up, my steam-horse goes off, and carries all his audience with him.

While I was speaking, the people moved up _en masse_, and they gave me three cheers upstanding when I had done." * * * * * Another memorable event was a grand dinner given to Washington Irving and myself, as chief guests amongst others, by Prince Astor at his palatial residence in New York.

As for the profusion of gold plate, glittering glass, innumerable yellow wax-candles in ormolu chandeliers, and general exhibition of splendid and luxurious extravagance, and all manner of costly wines and rarest gourmandise, I never have seen its like before or since; and more than this (if I may state the fact without much imputation of vaingloriousness), the intellectual treat was, to my _amour propre_ at least, of a still more exquisite character, when our host protested to his company in a generous and genial speech that, if he could make the exchange, he would give all his wealth for half the literary glory of Washington Irving and Martin Tupper! We whispered to each other we heartily wished he could.

I strangely missed visiting Irving at his own home, though urgently invited to it; but somehow other pressing engagements hindered, and so it was not to be.
On the same day with the Astorian dinner, Mr.Davis, a man of high social position, had urged me to dine with him, but I could not come as engaged till the evening.

Now he, a local poet himself, had asked me in divers stanzas of fair rhyme; and so, not willing either to beat him in versification or to let him beat me, I made this epigrammatic reply in dog-Latin, which was taken to be rather 'cute:-- "Certes, amice Davis, Ibo quocunque mavis, Sed princeps Astor primo Me rapuit ad prandium; Cum me relinquit, imo In me videbis handyum." This skit was well appreciated.