With the reflection of the looking-glasses, one of the bailies was so possessed within himself, that he tried to chair himself where chair was none, and landed, not very softly, on the carpet; while another of the deacons, a fat and dumpy man, as he was trying to make a bow, and throw out his leg behind him, stramped on a favourite Newfoundland dog's tail, that, wakening out of its slumbers with a yell that made the roof ring, played drive against my uncle, who was standing abaft, and wheeled him like a butterfly, side foremost, against a table with a heap of flowers on it, where, in trying to kep himself, he drove his head, like a battering-ram, through a looking-glass, and bleached back on his hands and feet on the carpet.
Seeing what had happened, they were all frightened; but his lordship, after laughing heartily, was politer, and knew better about manners than all that; so, bidding the flunkies hurry away with the fragments of the china jugs and jars, they found themselves, sweating with terror and vexation, ranged along silk settees, cracking about the weather and other wonderfuls.
Such a dinner! the fume of it went round about their hearts like myrrh and frankincense.

The landlord took the head of the table, the bailies the right and left of him; the deacons and councillors were ranged along the sides, like files of soldiers; and the chaplain at the foot said grace.

It is entirely out of the power of man to set down on paper all that they got to eat and drink; and such was the effect of French cookery, that they did not know fish from flesh.

Howsoever, for all that, they laid their lugs in every thing that lay before them, and what they could not eat with forks they supped with spoons; so it was all to one purpose.
When the dishes were removing, each had a large blue glass bowl full of water, and a clean calendered damask towel, put down by a smart flunkie before him; and many of them that had not helped themselves well to the wine, while they were eating their steaks and French frigassees, were now vexed to death on that score, imagining that nothing remained for them, but to dight their nebs and flee up.
Ignorant folk should not judge rashly, and the worthy town-council were here in error; for their surmises, however feasible, did the landlord wrong.

In a minute they had fresh wine decanters ranged down before them, filled with liquors of all variety of colours, red, green, and blue; and the table was covered with dishes full of jargonelles and pippins, raisins and almonds, shell-walnuts and plumdamases, with nut- crackers, and every thing else they could think of eating; so that, after drinking "The King, and long life to him," and "The constitution of the country at home and abroad," and "Success to trade," and "A good harvest," and "May ne'er waur be among us," and "Botheration to the French," and "Corny toes and short shoes to the foes of old Scotland," and so on, their tongues began at length not to be so tacked; and the weight of their own dignity, that had taken flight before his lordship, came back and rested on their shoulders.
In the course of the evening, his lordship whispered to one of the flunkies to bring in some things--they could not hear what--as the company might like them.