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The tailor looked sharply at his young customer. Whoever he might be, he was clearly no fool; and without more ado he brought forward his patterns and bent himself to the work in hand. Having chosen the colours and stuffs for the suits of clothes, the lads returned to the Bell, where a supper of cold chicken and the remains of a fine sirloin awaited them, with two tankards of home-brewed ale.
There, in the bar, before blazing logs in a great fireplace, for the evening had come chilly, a table was laid for us, and we sat down with hearty happiness to tankards of old ale and a smoking haunch. I have never drunk or eaten with a better relish. There were half a dozen or so sitting about the bar, and all ears were for news of the army and all hands for our help.
The excise man finally reported. "They're na English, nor Scots, nor even Irish. But they're liked weel enough! They're good fighters. Oh, aye, when ye march and fight alangside them, they're good enough! They're his Majesty's cousins. God save King George!" The recruiting party banged with tankards upon the table. One of the number put a question of his own.
Here we ranged our tins and our saucepans, the best and newest; Rosamond would have nothing to do with the old battered ones; over them we hung our spoons and our little strainers, our egg-beaters, spatulas, and quart measures, these last polished to the brightness of silver tankards; in one corner stood the flour-barrel, and over it was the sieve; in the cupboards were our porcelain kettles, we bought two new ones, a little and a big, the frying-pans, delicately smooth and nice now, outside and in, the roasting-pans, and the one iron pot, which we never meant to use when we could help it.
Even half a Roman coat of mail and a bit of mosaic from a Roman bath were to be seen here. Amid these antiquities, stood beautiful Venetian glasses, pine-cones and ostrich-eggs. Such another tap-room could scarcely be found in Holland, and even the liquor, which a neatly-dressed maid poured for the guests from oddly-shaped tankards into exquisitely-wrought goblets, was exceptionally fine.
The company all round the table signified their hearty acquiescence, and while the landlord was replenishing the tankards, the stranger proceeded to further enlighten them respecting his personal affairs. He informed them that a man had cleared out from Nashville about six months ago, leaving him, the speaker, in the lurch to the tune of twenty-seven hundred dollars.
The shouts, the vociferations that resounded through the bars and taverns decorated with glasses, tankards, and bottles of marvelous shape, mortars for pounding sugar, and bundles of straws! "Mint-julep" roars one of the barmen; "Claret sangaree!" shouts another; "Cocktail!" "Brandy-smash!" "Real mint-julep in the new style!"
A well scoured deal table extended along one side of the kitchen, with a cold round of beef and other hearty viands upon it, over which two foaming tankards of ale seemed mounting guard. Travellers of inferior order were preparing to attack this stout repast, while others sat smoking and gossiping over their ale on two high-backed oaken seats beside the fire.
"Of old, no man put flagons or mixing-bowls on the tables; the steward filled the cup from the butt, and there was no abundance of adorned vessels. "No one who honoured past ages put the smooth wine-jars beside the tankards, and of old no bedizened lackey heaped the platter with dainties.
They saw the pet lamb of their infants, the silver earrings of their brides, the brave tankards they had drunk their marriage wine in, the tame bird that flew to their whistle, all seized for food or spoil.
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