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“My grandfather,” said the banjo, “drank ‘dog’s-nose,’ my father drank ‘dog’s-nose,’ and I drink ‘dog’s-nose.’ If that ain’t heredity, there’s no virtue in the board schools.”

“Ah!” said the piccolo, “you’re always a-boasting of your science. And so, I suppose, your son’ll drink ‘dog’s-nose,’ too?”

“No,” retorted the banjo, with a rumbling laugh, like wind in the bung-hole of an empty cask; “for I ain’t got none. The family ends with me; which is a pity, for I’m a full-stop to be proud on.”

He was an enormous, tun-bellied person–a mere mound of expressionless flesh, whose size alone was an investment that paid a perpetual dividend of laughter. When, as with the rest of his company, his face was blackened, it looked like a specimen coal on a pedestal in a museum.

There was Christmas company in the Good Intent, and the sanded tap-room, with its trestle tables and sprigs of holly stuck under sooty beams reeked with smoke and the steam of hot gin and water.

“How much could you put down of a night, Jack?” said a little grinning man by the door.

“Why,” said the banjo, “enough to lay the dustiest ghost as ever walked.”

“Could you, now?” said the little man.

“Ah!” said the banjo, chuckling. “There’s nothing like settin’ one sperit to lay another; and there I could give you proof number two of heredity.”

“What! Don’t you go for to say you ever see’d a ghost!”

“Haven’t I? What are you whisperin’ about, you blushful chap there by the winder?”

“I was only remarking sir, ’twere snawin’ like the devil.”

” Is it? Then the devil has been misjudged these eighteen hundred and ninety odd years.”

“But did you ever see a ghost?” said the little grinning man, pursuing his subject.

“No, I didn’t, sir,” mimicked the banjo, “saving in coffee grounds. But my grandfather in his cups see’d one; which brings us to number three in the matter of heredity.”

“Give us the story, Jack,” said the “bones,” whose agued shins were extemporizing a rattle on their own account before the fire.

“Well, I don’t mind,” said the fat man. “It’s seasonable; and I’m seasonable, like the blessed plum-pudden, I am; and the more burnt brandy you set about me, the richer and headier I’ll go down.”

“You’d be a jolly old pudden to digest,” said the piccolo.

“You blow your aggrawation into your pipe and sealing-wax the stops,” said his friend.

He drew critically at his “churchwarden” a moment or so, leaned forward, emptied his glass into his capacious receptacles, and, giving his stomach a shift, as if to accommodate it to its new burden, proceeded as follows:–

“Music and malt is my nat’ral inheritance. My grandfather blew his ‘dog’s-nose,’ and drank his clarinet like a artist and my father–“

“What did you say your grandfather did?” asked the piccolo.

“He played the clarinet.”

“You said he blew his ‘dog’s-nose.'”

“Don’t be a ass, Fred!” said the banjo, aggrieved. “How the blazes could a man blow his dog’s nose, unless he muzzled it with a handkercher, and then twisted its tail? He played the clarinet, I say; and my father played the musical glasses, which was a form of harmony pertiklerly genial to him. Amongst us we’ve piped out a good long century–ah! we have, for all I look sich a babby bursting on sops and spoon meat.”

“What!” said the little man by the door. “You don’t include them cockt hatses in your expeerunce?”

“My grandfather wore ’em, sir. He wore a play-actin’ coat, too, and buckles to his shoes, when he’d got any; and he and a friend or two made a permanency of ‘waits’ (only they called ’em according to the season), and got their profit goin’ from house to house, principally in the country, and discoursin’ music at the low rate of whatever they could get for it.”

“Ain’t you comin’ to the ghost, Jack?” said the little man hungrily.