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Between the hours at which the last toss-pot went by and the first sparrow shook himself, the silence in Casterbridge barring the rare sound of the watchman was broken in Elizabeth's ear only by the time-piece in the bedroom ticking frantically against the clock on the stairs; ticking harder and harder till it seemed to clang like a gong; and all this while the subtle-souled girl asking herself why she was born, why sitting in a room, and blinking at the candle; why things around her had taken the shape they wore in preference to every other possible shape.

But if the captain commanding were "true steel, an old bold blade, one of the old buccaneers, a hearty brave toss-pot, a trump, a true twopenny" why, then, they would spend thirty or forty pounds apiece in a drinking bout aboard his ship, "carousing and firing of Guns three or four days together."

An appropriate setting is Edmund Clarence Stedman's "Falstaff's Song," a noteworthy lyric of toss-pot moralization on death. His song of "Joy" is exuberant with spring gaiety, and some of his best manner is seen in his "Elégie," for violin and piano. He has also written a deal of church song.

Here is a kind of a whim on that subject which I made formerly: One evening when Toss-pot had been at his butts, And Joan his fat spouse crammed with turnips her guts, Together they pigged, nor did drink so besot him But he did what was done when his daddy begot him.

At which, Samoa expressed much surprise, that he should be so unobservant as not to know, that in Mardi, guests might be pressed to demean themselves, without its being expected that so they would do. A true toss-pot himself, he bode his time.

Just so, quoth Panurge, Jenin Toss-pot of Quinquenais, evacuating some wine of his own burning on his wife's posteriors, laid the ill-fumed wind that blowed out of their centre as out of some magisterial Aeolipile.

Cry not on cowardice; it is but wisdom, Dick; for this poor realm so tosseth with rebellion, and the king's name and custody so changeth hands, that no man may be certain of the morrow. Toss-pot and Shuttle-wit run in, but my Lord Good-Counsel sits o' one side, waiting."