WHAT STORY IT WAS THAT HUMPY HARLOW TOLD AT JACK GINGER'S.
At three o'clock on the day after the dinner, Antony Harrison and I found ourselves eating bread and cheese--part of _the_ cheese--at Jack Ginger's. We recapitulated the events of the preceding evening, and expressed ourselves highly gratified with the entertainment. Most of the good things we had said were revived, served up again, and laughed at once more. We were perfectly satisfied with the parts which we had respectively played, and talked ourselves into excessive good-humour. All on a sudden Jack Ginger's countenance clouded. He was evidently puzzled; and sat for a moment in thoughtful silence. We asked him, with Oriental simplicity of sense, "Why art thou troubled?" and till a moment he answered--
"What _was_ the story which Humpy Harlow told us about eleven o'clock last night, just as Bob Burke was teeming the last jug?"
"It began," said I, "with '_Humphries told me._'"
"It did," said Antony Harrison, cutting a deep incision into the cheese.
"I know it did," said Jack Ginger; "but what was it that Humphries had told him? I cannot recollect it if I was to be made Lord Chancellor."
Antony Harrison and I mused in silence, and racked our brains, but to no purpose. On the tablet of our memories no trace had been engraved, and the tale of Humphries, as reported by Harlow, was as if it were not, so far as we were concerned.
While we were in this perplexity, Joe Macgillicuddy and Bob Burke entered the room.
"We have been just taking a hair of the same dog," said Joe. "It was a pleasant party we had last night. Do you know what Bob and I have been talking of for the last half-hour?"
We professed our inability to conjecture.
"Why, then," continued Joe, "it was about the story that Harlow told last night."
"The story begins with '_Humphries told me_,'" said Bob.
"And," proceeded Joe, "for our lives we cannot recollect what it was."
"Wonderful!" we all exclaimed. "How inscrutable are the movements of the human mind."
And we proceeded to reflect on the frailty of our memories, moralising in a strain that would have done honour to Dr Johnson.
"Perhaps," said I, "Tom Meggot may recollect it."
Idle hope! dispersed to the winds almost as soon as it was formed. For the words had scarcely passed "the bulwark of my teeth," when Tom appeared, looking excessively bloodshot in the eye. On inquiry, it turned out that he, like the rest of us, remembered only the cabalistic words which introduced the tale, but of the tale itself, nothing.